Alley in the Garden
Алея в саду
A tiny square panel of a shaded garden path, painted late in Serheiev's career. Its scale and directness make it effectively a plein-air study raised to the status of a finished picture.
Related Works
Haymaking
Mowers at work in a summer meadow, painted the year Serheiev was elected an honorary free associate of the Imperial Academy. The picture places its figures small inside a broad, hazy field rather than making them the subject.
Fishing on the Dnipro
Fishermen working a seine net on the Dnipro, one of Serheiev's few compositions built around labour rather than pure landscape. The wide river and low bank are treated with the same soft, even light as his garden pictures.
The Garden
An overgrown village garden painted in the year Serheiev received both the Order of St Stanislaus and an honourable mention in Paris. It is one of the clearest statements of his preferred subject: an enclosed, sun-filled garden with no anecdote in it.
Apple Trees in Blossom. In Ukraine
A Ukrainian orchard in full flower, catalogued in the nineteenth century under the imperial term 'Little Russia'. The blossom is handled as a dense screen of broken white and pink, the closest Serheiev came to impressionist paint.