Isaac Levitan is one of the most subtle and profound Russian landscape painters. His paintings are always animated and imbued with the mood of nature. Levitan’s works became the symbol of the concept of “Russian landscape”. Alexey Savrasov and Vasily Polenov were his teachers at the Academy of Arts. The presented work was made in the 1890s. Those were difficult times for the artist. Levitan was Jewish by nationality and often experienced the hardships because of his origin. In 1892, the artist was forced to leave Moscow, since Jews were not allowed to live in the capitals. He settled in the Vladimir province, and also lived in Tverskaya province.

Levitan’s landscapes of the 1890s are particularly philosophical, and a good example of that period is his ‘Over Eternal Peace’ of 1894. The artist moved away from plain air method to the style of Art Nouveau, with its inherent generalization and decorativeness. However, the impressions that the landscape painter experienced were not invented, they were rather comprehended through the state of nature.

The picture ‘Fog over the Water’ belongs to the 1890s. Levitan managed to catch the moment when thick fumes are just beginning to cover the ground. One more moment and everything in nature will disappear. In this natural phenomenon, the artist saw for himself a difficult, but interesting task: to convey a damp, foggy atmosphere at nightfall, disappearing space, a slow fading of the color of the earth and the cold light of the moon. There is also a noticeable departure from realism and tendency to general forms. The artist conveyed the mood and state of mind. It is possible that the illness that tormented him, or gloomy thoughts were reflected in this canvas.

The landscape ‘Fog over the Water’ is deeply lyrical, even elegiac. The artist managed to subtly relay the nuances of the environment and the modulation of light in the atmosphere of evening nature. The color fades away while retaining its certainty. The restrained coloring of the landscape projects perfectly the mood of quiet sadness. It should be noted that the artist also used various techniques to achieve the desired effects. Microscopic examination showed that the soil in the painting is two-layer: the lower layer is red-brown, while the upper one is white, dense, completely overlapping with the lower one. In some places, you can see how the author tried to remove the already dried paint. Probably, the artist originally had another version of the same composition, where the half of the moon was to the left, and then a new moon appeared, but somewhat smaller.