Ukrainian Night is an oil on canvas painting by Russian artist Arkhip Kuindzhi, from 1876.
In 1878 for this painting, along with the paintings On the Island of Valaam (1873, Tretyakov Gallery),Chumatsky tract in Mariupol (1875, Tretyakov Gallery) and Steppe (1875, Yaroslavl Art Museum), Kuindzhi was awarded the title of class artist of the 1st degree.
It can be said that it was in this piece that Kuindzhi first found himself, became on his true path, revealed all the richness of his artistic individuality.
It is with Ukrainian Night that we should mark the beginning of a mature period in the work of Kuindzhi....And art historian Vladimir Petrov wrote so in his article dedicated to the 150th anniversary of the birth of Arkhip Kuindzhi:[3] And in 1876 the painter showed himself an incomparable singer of the night steppe — the famous Ukrainian Night (GTG) appeared before the audience at the 5th Exhibition of the Peredvizhniki.
The deep dark-blue sky studded with bright stars, white huts of a steppe village illuminated by moonlight, slender pyramidal poplars and a pond overgrown with reeds were painted by the artist with amazing boldness of light and color generalization and an unusual combination of "physiological" authenticity and true poetry of the image, making one not only marvel at the mastery of illusion, but also recall Pushkin's and Gogol's inspired descriptions of the "marvelous" Ukrainian night.