Viktor Vasnetsov. "Ivan the Terrible Rides Out", 1897

Viktor Vasnetsov's "Ivan the Terrible Rides Out" is dated 1897. It is a crowded scene: at the centre is a rider on a white horse in ornate harness, with other horsemen beside him; behind them are a crowd, wooden buildings and churches with small domes, and above the riders rises a red banner bearing the image of a holy face.

In the left foreground a figure in a long white shirt, with loose hair, has raised his arms and turned towards the rider; on the right a chestnut horse lowers its head towards the wooden roadway. The right-hand part of the composition was left unfinished: the figures of people and horses there are only outlined in drawn lines. The work is painted in tempera on paper that has been lined onto canvas, that is, mounted on a canvas support.

Viktor Vasnetsov (1848–1926) was one of the founders of the "Russian style" in art at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. From 1894 he lived in Moscow, in a house built to his own design. In the studio of this house he painted "Bogatyrs" and the picture "Tsar Ivan Vasilyevich the Terrible", which he showed at the 25th exhibition of the Peredvizhniki (Wanderers) in 1897.