Smiling picture of Levitan "Birch Grove"

Isaak Ilich Levitan - an artist, after which the reputation of the creator of the "landscape of mood" was rightfully fixed. Nature in its picturesque creations shines with a gentle light of love. This is the picture of Levitan "Birch Grove", which the master created at the age of twenty-nine.

Origins

Biography of the artist is shrouded in mystery - he did not like to talk about personal circumstances, childhood and family, during his life destroyed his entire archive. Found after his death, a pack of letters contained a "vulture": "Burn without reading", which was done. According to the few memories of contemporaries, it can be established that Levitan showed the gift of the draftsman very early and joined this art form. At the age of 13 he became a student of the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. His teachers were Polenov and Savrasov - the then famous Russian artists. Levitan's painting "The Birch Grove" reminds us of the inextricable and deep connection that unites our landscape painters, who so sharply felt the temper of the wonderful Russian nature.

Landscapist, who has no equal

The pictures of the teachers captured the imagination of the young Levitan. Especially he was fascinated by the idea of embodying on the canvas the very soul of nature, its multifaceted moods. Isaac Ilyich spoke of his teacher A. Savrasov as a painter who knew how to find in the ordinary deeply intimate, unusually touching features that are so strongly felt in the Russian landscape. The first works of the young Levitan resembled the manner of the teacher. Elegical moods, twilight shades, gloomy and thoughtful objects - bogs, whirlpools, abandoned rural churchyards - all demonstrated the closeness of the aesthetics of Levitan's canvases to the creative manner of Savrasov.

But very soon the student demonstrated his own picturesque "language", according to which everyone now unerringly recognizes it.

Levitan's painting "Birch Grove": the history of creation

These were the years of rapprochement with the remarkable Russian writer Anton Chekhov. Together with the Chekhov family, Levitan rested in a Moscow estate near the village of Babkino. It was there that Levitan's magnificent "Birch Grove" was born. Master created it for four years, finishing work on the Volga, in the city of Ples. Today this masterpiece is exhibited in the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow.

The breath of the Russian forest

The description of the picture of Isaak Levitan "Birch Grove" should begin with the fact that the real object from which the artist wrote pearls and emerald-shining trees, was the Pleskaya Grove.

The mood of an unconscious joy, freshness and optimism exudes this small but expressive picture. How does Levitan achieve such emotional power? Of course, here there is a fusion of skill and harmony, which was the basis of the artist's inner world.

The play of light and shadow

Why is Levitan's "Birch Grove" attractive for the specialist? Analysis of techniques and techniques used by the artist, allows you to restore the unique features of the brush master. The whole space of the picture is filled only with grass, in which sparkle blue and yellow sparkles of flowers, trunks, shining green crowns: no sky, no beast or beast anywhere. Nevertheless, the forest lives! We feel his fresh breath, we hear the cheerful rustle of the foliage. The artist skillfully conveys the movement of warm rays, spiritualizing the landscape with trembling tenderness and gaiety. Two birches in the foreground strike with lyricism and verisimilitude. Pink and warm-brown spots gently laid on the trunks. The picture resembles the immediacy and easy clean rhythm of impressionism.

Contemporaries say that Levitan's friend Anton Pavlovich Chekhov told the author that in this picture, as in no other, the smile of a brilliant artist is felt.