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Dimensions: 71 by 90cm., 28 by 35 1/2 in.

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Provenance: This painting was a gift from Korovin to Léon Garganov, a Russian of Armenian origin who fled Russia in1917 settled in France two years later. He made his fortune managing a successful film montage studio in Boulogne-Billancourt and regularly helped emigré Russian artists living in France. As a result, a salon grew up around his hotel on the rue Joseph Bernard in Boulogne, where many Russian artists, including Korovin and Chaliapin would meet on Saturdays and Sundays.

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Notes: Korovin studied at the Moscow School of Painting with Levitan and Polenov in the 1880s, when the 'plein air' approach to painting espoused by the French Impressionists was beginning to dominate the Russian academies. However, from Korovin's earliest works it is evident that his brand of Impressionism was far ahead of that of his contemporaries.

Surfaces are used to explore the wealth of texture and colour and his subjects seem to radiate light themselves. One of Korovin's students remarked that, 'his greatest joy was the fascinating process of battling with nature, at the end of which a new, second life, enriched by the artist's poetic feeling, would emerge on the canvas.'

The Parisian landscapes are typical of the impulsive yet subtle character of Korovin's paintings. Whilst clearly influenced by Claude Monet's technique of building up a painting through gradations of shade, texture and colour, it is the aerial perspective of Korovin's compositions which sets his oeuvre apart. It is often said of Korovin that he was the first to introduce Impressionism to the stage in his designs, but the reverse is also true. The space created between the viewer and the scene portrayed gives as sense of theatricality and harks back to Korovin's earlier experience as a set designer: we are onlookers to the spectacle of life below.

By choosing night scenes, Korovin was able to exploit the tonal contrasts between the bright, vivid street-lighting and the darkness of the sky. The picture is brought to life by fast, broad and almost crude brush-work which enhances these complex colour juxtapositions. As Konstantin Yuon commented, 'Korovin's painting is the embodiment in imagery of the artist's happiness and joy of living. All the colours of the world beckoned to him and smiled at him'

Korovin moved to Paris indefinitely in 1923 but was left penniless following the theft of a great number of his works. Forced to enter into various binding agreements and rely on the generosity of other Russian emigré artists in the French capital, the work he produced in the latter part of his life, such as this Parisian Street Scene, conveys an excessive, almost phantasmagoric quality.