We haven’t located much reliable information about this artist. Born in Vladikavkaz, Russia, Fidaroff immigrated to Vancouver in 1913 and then the US in 1915—where he became a citizen in 1939. He was an art student in Los Angeles, CA as of 1917. His painting “In the Country” was exhibited at a 1937 Federal Art Project show. 2 works at Bennington Museum. 2 more images at FAP.
It's fall, and a farmer is seen returning a wagonload of hay, presumably cut and dried in his fields. Fidaroff composes his scene so as to obscure what may be a gas-powered tractor (since we don't see a team of horses ahead of the farmer). A warm shagginess is repeated throughout the painting--tree leaves, grass, the load of hay--using impressionist brushstrokes. In the distance, the cool gray skyline of a mountain points toward winter.
Spare composition of an open space, perhaps parkland, is most distinctive in its use of linear elements. The horizontals of skyline and a row of plantings across the middle of painting are intersected by verticals of trees and, in the distance, lines of color ascending the hills. At bottom center, where a viewer presumably is invited to enter the landscape, a serpentine footpath gives way to branching possibilities.
Presumably at the edge of a small mountain lake, we look across its surface to the middle and far distance. Although using atmospheric perspective to some extent, the hills and sky also register as a single plane differentiated by line and color. The uncanny effects of space are most clearly observed in the lake's reflections, especially the two similar trees at center: just their tips are tall enough to be seen over a hill's curvature, causing their reflection in the lake to appear as two isolated blocks of color.
In this bower of parkland amidst the Bronx, we look up a gentle hill toward its crest beneath a muted sky. Thin layers of impressionist blending create a modulated glow in trees and grassland alike. Perhaps the painting's most striking effect is its shaggy modeling of three trees lined up the foreground, distinct from the landscape by way of artfully placed boulders. In their distinct shapes and clear separation from the meadow, the effect is one of a gathering of trees.
Deceptively simple in scenic terms, Fidaroff's painting relies upon a carefully restricted range of colors, shapes, and distinctive landscape features. A river, partially visible at lower left, makes us aware of a serpentine line continuing to upper right; its contrasting color highlights another line composed of individual trees. The visual (and ecological) tension in painting is between ranges of forested mountains and those gold-green fields cleared by farmers. No humans are visible in Fidaroff's painting, but their presence is encoded into its design.
