Mown field 1934

Zinaida Serebriakova’s "Mown Field" seems to be a painted memory, layered in muted browns, greens, and grays, each mark a whisper of a past summer. The thing that strikes me is how the painting is built up. Look at the haystacks closest to us; they’re daubs of thick paint, almost sculptural, like she’s trying to grab hold of something fleeting. There's an earthiness to it. You can almost smell the cut grass. The sky is a swirl of gray clouds. It feels like a storm’s coming, or maybe it’s already passed. The way she’s handled the sky and the distant trees, it’s less about detail and more about mood. And that mood? It’s pure Serebriakova. She did quite a lot of rural scenes around this period. You could put this next to one of Courbet’s landscapes and see a similar touch. But for Serebriakova, it's not just about the view, it's about feeling the weight of the weather, the cycle of the seasons. Painting like this lets you ask questions, rather than settle on answers.