This airy landscape with snow-white clouds and a deep sky embodies the character of its author, famous Russian artist Konstantin Kryzhitsky. According to memoirs of his contemporaries, the painter was a sensitive, honest and very ingenuous person, who often walked in the clouds. But there was no place for negligence or absent-mindedness in his work: Kryzhitsky carefully executed even the minutest details. In The Lake here on display, one can see a reflection of every cloud and occasional ripples caused by the wind on the generally smooth, mirror-like water surface.

Konstantin Kryzhitsky was born in a merchant’s family. He was fond of arts from an early age, and began to attend an art school in Kiev. In 1877, he enrolled into the landscape class of the Academy of Arts. In 1884, he was awarded a grand gold medal and, merely five years later, he became an acclaimed academician of painting.

Kryzhitsky was a co-founder of the Arkhip Kuindzhi Society. Kuindzhi had arranged art shows for his pupils, paid them allowances, and did his best for the artists to be comfortably provided for. Kryzhitsky continued his friend’s cause. He wrote: ‘I began to organize a society named after Kuindzhi, hopeful to unite artists in one friendly family, without party or religious bias, as I do believe that only by a joint effort can they contribute to a common cause, the cause of Russian art, which is equally dear to all of them.’

‘I treat other people’s work with due respect, ” Kryzhitsky wrote. ‘And it is with utmost caution that I touch other people’s souls.’ However, his peers did not show the same respect for the delicate painter.