It's amazing how this awkward powerful stern merchant's son, Alexei Savrasov, subtly felt and painstakingly reflected on his canvasses the native Russian landscapes. Here is a portrait of Alexei Kondratievich Savrasov by Vasily Perov. The artist looks at us sternly, sullenly, incredulously. As if he asked: "What do you want my work for?" After all, there is not depicted the bright Italian nature, but only the trees that are not clothed in the spring, the wide Volga, views of distant monasteries or the Kremlin. What do you see in them? "
"Rural View", 1867
Already with students, working as the head of the landscape class in the school, Alexei Savrasov wrote the most usual village, located on the hilly banks of a narrow river, the slopes of which are covered by soft grass-ant. In the foreground the bee-keeper, the hives and cherry blossoms (not only some Japanese see the beauty of a cherry blossom), while the branches of the trees themselves are still exposed. They are not covered with leaves yet. Delicately and fancifully bent trunks and branches stretching towards the sky. It is ours - ordinary, dim, despite a sunny joyful day. Still pulls from the earth with a cool, and the air that filled the picture, has already warmed up. The river, when you involuntarily watch its current, falls into a lake or into a larger river. On the horizon is a narrow light sandy spit. From a small slope to the river descends a gently green birch grove. Alexei Savrasov showed the unobtrusive charm of the vast expanses, to which every Russian is so used.
"Elk Island in Sokolniki", 1869
From his native Moscow, and did not have to go anywhere in search of a dense forest. In the foreground we have in front of us the usual clay puddles through which the gatis are thrown so that the owner can approach a herd of cows grazing on the edge of a pine forest. With love, Alexei Savrasov looks at the green edge in the distance and the powerful wedge of the pine forest, which crashes into it. And, as usual, we see the favorite detail of the painter - the bare trunks of the mast wood, which hides near the horizon, merging with the dark clouds, swirling around the earth. The sky itself changes the tonality from light golden in the center to a saturated gray-blue. The native Muscovite, Alexei Savrasov, has been accustomed to seeing these discreet paints of the Moscow region since childhood. Probably, even when he closed his eyes, they stood before his mind's eye.
Unfinished Spring
She is depicted on a small canvas by Alexei Savrasov "The Rooks Have Arrived" (1871). So authentic is the image, that the look, as if you are on the street, runs over, without stopping from the snow with thawed patches and deep muddy puddles, in which the sky and the willow bushes growing nearby are reflected upwards, to where the clouds float in the blue expanse The same shade as the snow below. Earthly and heavenly unite. And all should stand the incessant crook of rooks, fighting because of their old, blackened by powerful heaps of branches of nests on birches, and building new ones. The air smells of melted snow and spring. Nude white birches with thin branches are graphically drawn against the sky. White church with a bell tower in the distance and a field and forest leaving for the horizon. What native this landscape, which we observe everywhere and everywhere in the middle non-chernozem region of Russia, is its most generalized image. The paintings of Alexei Savrasov still show the face of the beginning of spring, but he will not create the second such masterpiece. And who else would write such a thing?
Pictures of Alexei Kondratievich Savrasov
The predecessor of Savrasov in the depiction of the Russian landscape can be considered AG. Venetsianov. But the theme of this nature singer was more inclined to reflect the peasant life, which he saw in his estate. Savrasov gradually departs from the original romantic traditions, where the trees are written with lush crowns, where huge boulders are covered with low grass, and the whole tone of the picture is dark, and only the gentle blue of the sky covered with clouds flashes slightly: "View in the vicinity of Oranienbaum" (1854). ). He begins to look closely at each time of the year, finding for himself a special charm in them. But most of all, his attention is attracted by trunks, branches, branches of trees. Their whimsical curves, when they are drawn to the sun, are their intertwining. The artist is attracted by early spring. "Flood" (1868) is a magnificent picture of the awakening nature, which "through sleep meets the morning of the year". Birches almost did not flood the flood. And now they stand reflecting in the mirror of calm water so that, it seems, we see not just their repetition, but their roots, like the crown, which otherwise can not be seen. Later, Maurice Escher, who studied symmetry and infinity, will come to this reception. But an innovator in this field, which did not set up such clever tasks, was undoubtedly AK. Savrasov. The artist raised many students who flew out from under his wing. Their names and works became significant milestones in Russian painting (K. Korovin, I. Levitan, M. Nesterov).