"A Quiet Monastery" was a great success with the visitors of the exhibition and received high marks from the art critics, which finally confirmed the recognition of Levitan as one of the leading Russian landscape painters.

[1] After the revolution, the trace of the painting was lost, and its whereabouts remained unknown until 1960, when it was "found" in the private collection of the conductor Nikolai Golovanov.

[1] According to art critic Vladimir Stasov, "A Quiet Monastery" is Levitan's best painting "in the beauty and poetry of the tones of the evening sun".

[11][12] During this time he visited Plyos, Yuryevets and Kineshma[10] and made a number of sketches and studies for the future painting "A Quiet Monastery" and other works.

[14] According to Sofia Prorokova, the author of Levitan's biography, "Yurievets attracted the artist's sympathies," and especially "he was fascinated by a convent located in the forest on the opposite bank of the great Krivoye Lake".

[16] Beginning in November 1889, the artist had the opportunity to work in a workshop house in Bolshoy Trisvyatitelsky Lane, allocated to him by entrepreneur and philanthropist Sergei Morozov.

[26][27][28] The painting "A Quiet Monastery" made a great impression on the visitors to the exhibition, one of whom, the doctor and publicist Solomon Vermel, recalled at the beginning of the XX century: "...I see it before my eyes as now, as now I remember the blissful mood, the sweet peace of mind, which caused me this quiet corner, isolated from the world and all the "hypocritical daily affairs and all the vulgarity and prose of life".

[30][6][31][32] There were also more critical reviews: for example, the writer Mitrofan Remezov (the magazine "Russian Mind"), who praised "The Old Courtyard" and "Borghetto (in Italy)",[Note 2] did not include "A Quiet Monastery" among the landscapes he liked best at the exhibition,[33] and Pyotr Gnedich (the newspaper "Sankt-Peterburgskie Vedomosti") wrote that, in his opinion, the painting "A Quiet Monastery" was "weak in technique, but strong in mood".

According to him, Dmitry Grigorovich was delighted with Levitanovskogo landscape, Yakov Polonsky found that "the bridge is too long", and Alexei Plesheyev noted "the discord between the name of the painting and its content: "Excuse me, calls it a quiet place, and everything looks so cheerful here..."[35] Later, Chekhov used the image of the painting "Quiet Place" in his story "Three Years" (1894), whose heroine, Yulia, contemplates the landscape at the exhibition: "In the foreground, a river, across it a wooden bridge, on the other side of the path, disappearing into the dark grass.

<...> And for some reason it suddenly seemed to her that these very clouds, <...> and the forest and the field, which she had seen long ago and many times, <...> and she wanted to go, go, and walk on the path, and where there was an evening dawn, there rested the reflection of something unearthly, eternal".

[36][37] As a result of the success of "A Quiet Monastery" at the Peredvizhniki exhibition, Levitan was finally recognized as one of the leading Russian landscape painters.

[39] In 1891, directly from the exhibition of the Peredvizhniki, "A Quiet Monastery" was bought from the author by a certain Alfyorov from St. Petersburg: in the catalog of the State Tretyakov Gallery his surname is given without initials.

The writer Sofia Prorokova claimed that the artist found the prototype of this bell tower on Sobornaya Hill in Plyos, where the Cathedral of the Dormition of the Theotokos is located.

[69][70] Art historian Dmitry Sarabianov, comparing the two paintings, wrote that "A Quiet Monastery" is simpler and "can be interpreted as a sketch for the second, although it is complete in itself".

[76] According to the art historian Alexei Fedorov-Davydov, this study from life shows "Levitan's desire to convey the golden light that floods the grove and especially the buildings of the monastery".

[74] The art historian Faina Maltseva noted that in this study "the colors of nature were subtly captured in the soft light of the evening sun";[9] in her opinion, it became "the basis of the coloristic structure of the painting".

Among the drawings from this album, executed in graphite pencil on paper, is a sketch of the painting "Silent Abode" in horizontal format (15.8 × 9.8 cm, inv.

[6][7] The painter Vasily Polenov, who also visited the exhibition in St. Petersburg, noted in a letter to his wife on March 4, 1891, that in the painting everyone likes the top, but the water is not quite successful, too cutting".

The "poetic mood of the artist" expressed in this canvas, also noted the art critic Vladimir Sizov, who published an article in the newspaper "Russkie Vedomosti" (issue No.

[7] In an article published in the journal Russian Wealth (April 1891 issue), the writer and critic Leonid Obolensky paid special attention to Vasily Polenov's "Early Snow", Isaac Levitan's "A Quiet Monastery," Yefim Volkov's "The Yugas," and Ivan Shishkin's "Forest Glade" and "Pine" ("On the Wild North") among the landscapes presented at the 19th Travelling Exhibition.

[97] In an article published in the journal "Russian Mind" (May 1891 issue), the writer Mitrofan Remezov criticized the painting "A Quiet Monastery", not including it among the landscapes he liked best of those shown at the 19th Travelling Exhibition, but praising two other Levitan works: "Old Courtyard" and "Borghetto (in Italy)".

[Note 2] In Remezov's opinion, "A Quiet Monastery" could have been one of the best landscapes of the exhibition "if the artist had not been carried away by the too bright reflection of the churches and the forest in the river"; according to him, "this repeated, inverted view decisively spoils the beautiful picture".

According to Benois, in previous years Levitan "did not differ from our other landscape painters, from their general, gray and sluggish mass," but now "the appearance of" A Quiet Monastery" made, on the contrary, a surprisingly bright impression" — "it seemed as if one just removed the shutters from the windows, just opened them wide, and a jet of fresh, fragrant air rushed into the stale exhibition hall, which smelled so foul from the excessive number of tuluks and greasy boots.

Benois noted that in this work, the artist "said a new word, sang a new song of wonder," which so enchanted the audience that long-familiar things "seemed unseen, just discovered," and "struck by its pristine, fresh poetry.

At the same time, according to Fedorov-Davydov, "A Quiet Monastery" not only completes the Volga cycle of the artist's works, but also "begins the new one that marked the first half of the 1890s".

[9] According to Maltseva, these qualities were the reason for the success of the canvas at the traveling exhibition – the artist's contemporaries were fascinated by "the extraordinary harmony of the picture and the versatility of its content".

[102] Art historian Tatiana Kovalenskaya wrote that in "A Quiet Monastery" Levitan managed to convey with particular completeness the mood of landscapes from his "Volga series", on which he worked in 1887–1890 years.

[105] According to Kruglov, The Quiet Abode synthesized Levitan's impressions and reflections on the spiritual life of people and the Russian monasteries he had seen.

In his memoirs, the artist Aleksander Golovin wrote that during his studies at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture (1882–1889), "Levitan was already considered a great talent," but "he drew special attention to himself when his 'A Quiet Monastery' appeared at the Travelling Exhibition.

Golovin noted that "this picture was very simple in subject (summer morning, river, wooded cape, pink, dawn sky, distant monastery), but made an impression of remarkable freshness, sincerity, honesty.