Konstantin Korovin painted a lot of night streets in the Parisian series: Boulevard des Capucines, Boulevard des Italiens, the Bastille view. He painted the city from different perspectives, as if looking at the buildings while sitting at a table of an open cafe or standing on a high balcony. Art experts noted that those landscapes made the busy city look like a theatrical show that the author was watching from aside. The comparison is quite natural: before Konstantin Korovin left Russia, he did the scenery for theater plays at Savva Mamonto’s theater, and at the Bolshoy and the Mariinsky Theater.

Besides, the artist had to look after his sick wife and disabled son. In those difficult years, the artist met Galina Solovieva-Barbisan, who was married to an Italian engineer. She saw his paintings at exhibitions and bough 11 works from him, willing to help. In 1959 she came to Yaroslavl to see her relatives and gave the paintings as a gift to the Yaroslavl Art Museum. This is currently the largest collection of Korovin’s late works in Russia.