Couple on Horseback

A man and woman ride quietly through the night in this 1906 painting by Wassily Kandinsky, the woman seated ahead of her companion on a pale horse. Behind them, across a shadowy river, a Russian city glows with golden domes that seem to float against the deep blue dark. Kandinsky built the entire scene from thousands of tiny dots and dabs, so the trees, the water, and even the sky sparkle like a piece of glittering embroidery.

This work belongs to a stretch of Kandinsky's career before he turned to the pure abstraction he is remembered for today. He was still spinning a story here, pulling from Russian folklore and his fond memories of old Moscow, a city that stayed close to his heart his whole life. The speckled technique borrows from both folk needlework and the Pointillist painters he had studied in Europe. Even in this romantic fairytale scene, you can sense that color and feeling mattered more to him than accuracy, an early clue to the revolutionary art he would soon create.