A sunset painting catches a light that changes within minutes. Painters usually finish it in the studio, from memory and sketches. Many darken the land, because no paint is as bright as the sun.
A low sun's light crosses far more air to reach us. Air scatters blue more than red. That's Rayleigh scattering. What arrives is mostly orange and red.
Shapes against the light turn into silhouettes. On water, the sun lays a path of light toward you.
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How These Were Chosen
A painting got in on one of two grounds. Either the view is the whole subject, under a sun near the horizon at either end of the day. Or it holds people, tiny beside the sky or set directly against its light. I left out the many sunsets that only frame a portrait or a story.
12. Arkhip Kuindzhi, Red Sunset (1905 to 1908)
A huge dark cloud fills the middle of a red sky. Below it, a small yellow sun sinks toward a wide, flat river.
The near bank is already dark red, with a few low bushes. Arkhip Kuindzhi painted the scene between 1905 and 1908. The river is most likely the Dnipro, which runs south to the Black Sea.
Kuindzhi built the picture in flat bands. Long streaks of cloud cross the sky under the big one. Below them lie the far shore, the river and the near bank.
No tree or building leads the eye back into the distance. The sun sits close to the center of the canvas.
Many of his night landscapes put a full moon in that same place. For the art historian John Bowlt, the whole effect of this sunset depends on that central light.
The disk itself is only a small yellow dot. Its reflection on the river is several times wider.
The patch of gold holds the eye longer than the sun, because the water has no wind to break it up.
Kuindzhi never exhibited this sunset. After a one-man show in 1882, he never showed his work in public again.
He went on painting for almost thirty years. In his last years he worked on a series of sunsets.
The State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg holds a small oil study for Red Sunset, about 7.5 by 14 inches. According to that museum, no Russian realist landscape before the series had used color this intense.
Red Sunset is the large canvas that closes it. The painting still belonged to Kuindzhi when he died in 1910.
At a Glance
Artist: Arkhip Kuindzhi (1841 to 1910)
Painted: 1905 to 1908
Medium: Oil on canvas
Where to see it: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
About This Painting
Is Arkhip Kuindzhi's Red Sunset the same painting as Red Sunset on the Dnieper?
Yes. In Russian, Kuindzhi's painting is titled Krasnyi zakat, or red sunset. The Met added "on the Dnepr" to the title, then went back to the short title by March 2023.
What is the meaning of Red Sunset?
The State Russian Museum says Kuindzhi saw the setting sun as a kind of "cosmic fire" that colors sky, earth and water. He was after the eternal, the museum adds, where the Impressionists chased the fleeting.
11. Claude Monet, Houses of Parliament, Sunset (1903)
An orange sun sits in a violet sky, just to the right of a tall dark tower. Below it, the Houses of Parliament in London line the Thames in a row of deep blue silhouettes.
The river under them is pink and violet. Claude Monet signed and dated the canvas 1903, at the lower left. The view is from the other side of the river, from a covered terrace at St. Thomas' Hospital.