[3][4] Levitan began to work on the picture in 1891 in the Tver province, using as a model the natural landscape near the Tma River near the village of Bernovo.

Directly from the exhibition canvas was bought from the author by Pavel Tretyakov, in agreement with whom Levitan later finalized the image of the water surface, using sketches written by him in the summer of 1892 in the Vladimir province.

[13] The art historian Grigory Sternin wrote that the size of the canvas and "a somewhat dramatized characteristic of the object and color environment" indicate that one of the author's goals was "to create an epic spectacle, not devoid of elements of fairy-tale theatricality".

[17] He was accompanied by the artist Sofia Kuvshinnikova, and they were invited to spend the summer in the Tver region by Lika Mizinova, whom Levitan knew well as a close friend of Maria Pavlovna, the sister of Anton Pavlovich Chekhov.

"[20] In the same letter Levitan reported that he had settled close to the estate of Nikolai Pavlovich Panafidina (Lika Mizinova's uncle), and wrote that he had not quite succeeded in choosing the place: "On my first visit here I thought everything seemed very nice here, and now quite the opposite, I go and wonder how I could like it all".

[25][26] In fact, after Kuvshinnikova left for Moscow in August, Levitan moved to Kurovo-Pokrovskoye, an estate owned by Nikolai Pavlovich Panafidin and his wife Serafima Alexandrovna.

[29][30] In gratitude for the hospitality of the same autumn, Levitan painted a portrait of Nikolai Panafidin[31] (now in the Tver Regional Art Gallery),[32] depicting the owner of the house sitting in an armchair.

[31] Researchers of Levitan's work believe that in the estate Panafidinyh artist wrote one of the sketches for the painting By the Pool, and the main canvas was created by him in the winter of 1891/1892 in Moscow.

[35] The exhibition also included other works by Levitan — October (1891, now in the Samara Regional Art Museum), as well as Autumn and Summer (location unknown).

[37] On the other hand, Ilya Repin wrote to Pavel Tretyakov that "Levitan's big thing" he did not like — "for its size is not made at all", "in general it is not bad, but nothing else".

[40][41] The anonymous author of the article "Exhibition of Paintings by Wandering Artists", published in the Peterburgskaya Gazetar (№ 53, February 24, 1892), discussing the "very strong work" Brush Isaac Levitan's By the Pool, wrote that the canvas, which depicts directly from nature "ruined mill in a wooded area", "at a certain distance <...> positively captivates the viewer with its truthfulness".

[45][46] The art historian Alexei Fedorov-Davydov suggested that it was during this revision of the painting that Levitan dated it to 1892, since the version presented at the traveling exhibition in February was most likely completed in late 1891.

During this time the exhibition visited Kharkiv (August-September), Poltava (October), Elisavetgrad (November), Odessa (November-December), Kishinev (December-January) and Kyiv (January-February).

[3][4] According to literary scholar Gregory Byaly, "it seems that the old bridges, slippery, rotten, unreliable, and dangerous, lure one into the damp, mysterious depths of the forest".

[63] According to Alexei Fedorov-Davydov, "everything in this landscape is unsettling and tense: and the darkening green of the trees and bushes and the yellow water in the light of the sunset, different but equally dramatic, and in the standing mirror on the right and in the disturbing waves on the left".

While painting the picture, Levitan masterfully solved the difficult problem of "coloristic association in a whole deaf green colors of trees, gray-violet clouds and yellow tones of the sky, reflections in the water, boards and timbers of the dam.

[65] The State Tretyakov Gallery has a sketch of the same name for the painting By the Pool (gray paper or cardboard, graphite pencil, 32×48 cm, inv.

[39][70] Later, in his book Old Days, Nesterov recalled that he loved Levitan's Pool "as something experienced by the author and embodied in the real forms of a dramatic landscape".

[13]Art historian Faina Maltseva noted that in such Levitan landscapes as By the Pool, Vladimirka, and Over Eternal Peace, the "oppressive environment of social life" is reflected and the "gloomy story of Russian reality" is sounded.

[73] According to art historian Mikhail Alpatov, the extraordinary uniqueness of the painting By the Pool is achieved by "combining the bleak uncertainty of the landscape with the swiftly dragging movement" along the timbers of the dilapidated dam.

According to Alpatov, in the very construction of this landscape "there is something oppressive, imperiously calling to the underdrawing, destroying the weak man's maelstrom", and Levitanovsky's canvas makes no less an impression than Viktor Vasnetsov's painting Alyonushka (1881, State Tretyakov Gallery), in which a similar mood is expressed in the figure of the girl.

[74] According to the art historian Vladimir Petrov, the painting By the Pool was "the first in a series of large-scale works in which Levitan appeared as a profound "dramatist" of the Russian landscape".

[62] Art historian Grigory Sternin wrote that Levitan's painting By the Pool is not inferior to his Vladimirka in the semantic capacity of the poetic image, although it does not lend itself to the same straightforward ideological interpretation.

According to Sternin, the main thing is that in the painting By the Pool "the motif of the landscape itself has an accentuated iconicity" because it "has more of organic existence and, above all, of the eternal mysteries of nature itself".

[77] Sternin noted that in the painting By the Pool Levitan "tends to a monumental-declamatory intonation," and the size of the canvas and "a somewhat dramatized character of the subject-color environment" indicate that one of the author's goals was "to create an epic spectacle, not without elements of fairy-tale theatricality.