Russian spring landscape: paintings by famous artists

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

The change of seasons is one of the favorite themes of Russian landscape painters, and this is not surprising. To capture the transitional states of nature that are invisible to an ordinary person, to convey the shades of mood, the subtleties of a particular color scheme - all this requires special skill and special spiritual sensitivity of the painter. The autumn and spring periods are recognized by many artists as the most fertile in terms of material selection, plasticity and expressiveness.

General characteristics

Savrasov and Levitan, Yuon and Vinogradov, Venetsianov and Ostroukhov, Kuindzhi, Shishkin - this is the most modest list of the best domestic masters. Considering their work, let's try to understand: what kind of Russian spring landscape is it? The paintings “Rooks Have Arrived”, “March”, “First Greenery” and others immerse us in a joyful and enlightened state of awakening nature, melting snow, sparkling sun on the first juicy greenery. A celebration of life, light, joy, a foretaste of renewal not only of the external world, but of the inner human "I" of the artist - such, for example, is Levitan'sspring landscape. Paintings “Spring. Big Water”, “March” literally radiate sunshine and warmth. We feel the spicy freshness and sweetness of the air, we hear the fraction of a drop and the sonorous hubbub of birds. Each meeting with such a picturesque canvas helps to experience the happiness of life again and again, to enter into harmony with natural rhythms and laws. After all, we feel the thirst for renewal, hope for the best, our own spiritual youth more clearly and sharply precisely in the spring. Therefore, the spring landscape (paintings by artists or meetings with nature “live”) personifies for most people the opportunity to start all over again, to enter a different direction, to become better, cleaner, more enlightened. We will also try to understand and feel this by analyzing some of the listed paintings in this article.

Savrasov's "Rooks"

The spring landscape of Savrasov's painting, which, in fact, has become the artist's calling card, is permeated with motifs of farewell to winter frosts and snows, with dull melancholy and inner cold. Written and exhibited in 1971, it immediately became the subject of discussion, approval and recognition of the true talent of its creator. "Wonderful", "truly spring" called this canvas Alexandre Benois, Savrasov's colleague in the "workshop of artists." What do we see on it? It seems to be still boring winter snows, bare trees, shaggy miserable village houses, the silhouette of a church and a gray sky with rare blue gaps. Cold, damp, uncomfortable. And you take a closer look! And now other details become noticeable. A soft breath of warm spring air seemed to sweep across my face.breeze. The pond has melted, and thawed patches are visible here and there in the porous snow. And, most importantly, the branches of the still bare trees merrily and lively settle in rooks - the restless heralds of the coming spring. As Benois notes, in the last years before the appearance of Savrasov's oil painting, spring landscapes literally flooded art exhibitions. But it was the "Rooks" that turned out to be marked by the seal of inspiration that distinguishes true masterpieces from fakes.

March motives in Levitan's work

Another luminary of the landscape genre, Isaac Levitan, picks up the spring baton. His "March" is a surprisingly bright, light, festive picture. It is saturated with solar heat, radiates it, and every detail emphasizes the inevitable death of winter. The sky is deep, blue, the thawed rutted road, the open doors of the house, the radiance of birch trunks in the rare withered last year's foliage, the savraska peacefully dozing under the rays of the sun that warmed it - all this makes us think about the very imminent onset of truly hot days. Levitan's spring landscape, whose drawings are familiar to us from school, is deeply Russian, national. But it is understandable and close to anyone who is drawn to beauty and loves nature.

Features of children's perception

It's no secret that exposure to works of art requires a lot of intense inner work. Our soul is obliged to work - to learn to empathize, sympathize, sympathize. It's a difficult process to learnwho needs a person from an early age. And spring landscape pictures for children can help. Delicate and fragile snowdrop, shaking its beautiful head on a thin dark green stalk; the image of gardening and field work, the first rain and the first rainbow, a titmouse on a twig with small sticky leaves - such sketches create a close and recognizable image of spring, help to comprehend the features of the change of seasons and introduce the child to a new world, whose name is Nature and Life.