Overgrown Pond

Overgrown Pond is a landscape painting by Russian painter Vasily Polenov (1844–1927), completed in 1879. The painting, which measures 80 × 124.7 cm, is part of the State Tretyakov Gallery's collection in Moscow (Inventory No. 10460). The view depicted on the canvas summarizes the artist's different experiences. Polenov made several studies for the painting in 1877 when he visited his parents in the village of Petrushki near Kyiv. The canvas was completed in early 1879 in Moscow. The painting Overgrown Pond was exhibited at the Moscow part of the 7th exhibition of the Association of Traveling Art Exhibitions ("Peredvizhniki"), opened in April 1879. For several decades the canvas was in private collections, and then, in 1928, it was acquired by the State Tretyakov Gallery. Together with two other Polenov's works of the late 1870s – paintings Moscow Courtyard and Grandmother's Garden – canvas "Overgrown Pond" refers to "a kind of lyrical and philosophical trilogy of the artist". According to the art historian Aleksei Fedorov-Davydov, in the painting "Overgrown Pond" Polenov managed "with the greatest force and picturesque beauty" to express "real, but wrapped in a kind of romance poetry of nature". Art historian Tamara Yurova noted that this painting "completed a certain stage of Polenov's work, marked the onset of creative maturity".