“Over the River Oka” is one of the most famous and poetic landscapes of Porfiry Nikitich Krylov. It was painted in Polenovo — the estate of the artist Vasily Dmitrievich Polenov. This painting is part of a large Polenovo series, combining more than 70 paintings and watercolor landscapes of the master.
The picture reflects the idea of the soul of Russian nature with its colorful meadows, golden rye, blue rivers and quiet expanses of valleys. A country road winds over the river, along which a woman in a simple peasant attire walks toward the viewer. A boundless sky is above her head, both clear and stormy, like life itself. Gloomy gray clouds gradually turn into those light and snow-white, through which joyful blue gaps can be seen.
For the first time
Porfiry Krylov visited Polenovo in the summer of 1946 and since then enjoyed
coming to stay at the estate. He devoted many landscapes from the 1940s–1960s
to the bright and lyrical beauty of these places. In his book “Keepers of
Springs”, Fedor Polenov, grandson of Vasily Polenov and director of the
Polenovo Museum-Reserve, recalled:
