In the boat

Painted in 1888, the same year as the famous Spanish balcony painting, 'In the Boat' belongs to the cluster of works from Korovin's formative Impressionist period. The subject — figures in a boat on sunlit water — was one of the canonical Impressionist motifs, exploited by Monet in his floating studio paintings and by Manet in his Argenteuil boat scenes. Korovin may have arrived at the subject independently or through direct knowledge of French examples, but the result is confidently Impressionist in its treatment of light on water and the casual informality of the figure arrangement. The Tretyakov Gallery holds this work alongside the Spanish paintings as documentation of the crucial moment when Korovin developed his mature style, drawing not on academic convention but on direct visual sensation and the freshness of optical experience.

The painting uses broken reflective brushwork to capture the specific optical quality of light on moving water. The figures are loosely suggested rather than anatomically defined, their forms dissolving into the surrounding luminosity of the scene.