The article considers the peculiarity of M. Gorky's embodiment of the light and color palette of the depicted time, the Silver age, permeated by the tendencies of visual-pictorial-perception. The text of Gorky's novel analyzes not only the part of an artistic space. that is directly related to painting (ekphrasis), but also an author's desire to create a picturesque portrait of the hero, recreate the landscape and draw a picture. The paper shows. that the Gorky landscape in the artistic system of the novel bears the features of an impressionism and expressionism, close to the modernist painting by I. Levitan, M. Nesterov, M. Vrubel. Thus Gorky in the novel founds an opportunity to designate a single dialogic field of characters, author and readers of the novel.