Description of the painting by Venetsianov "On arable land. Spring"

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

Portrait and landscape painter Alexei Gavrilovich Venetsianov is one of the masters of the domestic genre. In his piggy bank there are truthful peasant portraits with a share of sentimentality. One of the most sentimental, but at the same time mysterious paintings of the artist is the work "On arable land. Spring". This masterpiece raises many questions. We offer you a description of Venetsianov's painting "On arable land. Spring". Perhaps after that you will look at the familiar canvas in a new way, you will see effects and elements in it.

Venetsianov "On arable land. Spring": year of creation and background

Aleksey Gavrilovich came from a merchant family. He himself worked for some time as a land surveyor in forestry. He studied the tricks of painting on his own, and then took lessons from the famous portrait painter Vladimir Borovikovsky. At 40, he graduatedcareer of an official and moved from St. Petersburg to the Tver province. Since 1819, the artist and his family lived in the village of Safonkovo, Tver province. Here he began to develop his "peasant" style in painting.

Venetsianov was a very prosperous landowner and tried in every possible way to make life easier for the peasants. For them, he built a school, gave them the opportunity to keep horses and cattle. Just in the 20s of the XIX century, the painting by Alexei Gavrilovich Venetsianov "On the arable land. Spring" was painted. Together with her, a whole cycle of paintings by the artist related to the labor of the peasants came out. In the article you will see photos of paintings: "In the harvest. Summer", "Haymaking", "Threshing floor". All these masterpieces are today in the Tretyakov Gallery, and one of the villages in the Tver region was renamed Venetsianovo. The famous artist is buried there.

Description of Venetsianov's painting "On arable land. Spring"

It is impossible to imagine Russian painting without Venetsianov's masterpiece. In the background of the picture one can see a field plowed up in spring. The grass turns green because the artist left the edges untouched. On the right we see thin trees and a strange sloping stump.

In the foreground of the canvas, a very smart young peasant woman stands before us. She is wearing a pink sundress and a beautiful kokoshnik. A woman with a light and smooth gait leads two horses pulling a harrow. The peasant woman steps lightly with her bare feet, as if dancing and smiling slightly.

On the right in the foreground we see a baby. He quietly enjoys histoys. Everything that is depicted on the canvas is very beautiful: landscape, woman, horses. As well as a peasant outfit, blue sky and clouds.

The meaning of ethnography in the picture

We imagine peasant labor to be hard and exhausting. And in the painting by Venetsianov, a woman in festive attire easily copes with horses harnessed to harrows. Why is a woman, doing "black work", walking in festive clothes. Where is the real truth of life? The fact is that among the peasants the first plowing was equated to a holiday. Back in the days of pagan beliefs, festivities were organized in the villages to appease the gods of fertility.

Venetsianov in this picture not so much plunged into ethnography and peasant life, as he captured the manifestation of eternal being. In the image of a peasant woman, who is much taller than horses, the artist showed a beautiful, light, young spring, stepping on the ground, renewing nature, calming children.

Proportions in Venetsianov's painting

In the painting "On arable land. Spring" Alexei Gavrilovich Venetsianov was the first among Russian artists to show the work of a farmer in the form of a sacrament, something sacred. The large size of the woman in the picture suggests that she carries the allegorical meaning of spring itself. The image of the stately and powerful body of a peasant woman is similar to the art of high antiquity. If you look closely at the canvas, then the horses also resemble winged Pegasuses.

If you look at the photo of the painting, it seems that this is a canvasmust be large. In fact, the picture is not that big and does not particularly stand out in the collection of the Tretyakov Gallery. Compared to her powerful and large-scale message, her dimensions are quite small - 51 by 65 cm.

Visual effects

Looking at the painting, we can notice some very interesting visual effects. Firstly, Alexei Gavrilovich deliberately underestimated the horizon line. This technique is used by icon painters, but Venetsianov also applied it to secular painting. The use of a low horizon gives monumentality and solemnity to the main character of the picture.

Another trick of the artist is that in the background he depicted another peasant woman, that is, he used the "mirror" method. It visually seems that this is not another woman, but the same one made a circle and moves away from us far into the future, like spring. Perhaps the artist used this technique to emphasize everything cyclical that occurs in nature.

Connection with the "Seasons"

The painting "On the arable land. Spring" can be attributed to a whole cycle of paintings by Venetsianov "The Seasons". In four of his paintings, Alexei Gavrilovich depicted different seasons, from early spring to late autumn and even winter. The autumn painting "Haymaking" was hidden from the public for a very long time, and the winter season was depicted on the canvas "Landscape", which disappeared without a trace. Thus, the artist perceives peasant labor as somethingthen primordial, eternal, repeating, similar to the change of seasons.

It is important to note that the original painting "On the arable land. Spring" was called "Woman harrowing the field." Then she was renamed "Village Woman with Horses". Only after the creation of the "Seasons" cycle did it finally acquire its current name. Today, looking at the master's canvas, we enjoy the harmony of Russian fields, the spring sky with rare clouds flying over the horizon. We are amazed by the graceful movements of a peasant woman floating above the ground, her beautiful sundress in the form of a Greek tunic. Through a simple peasant scene, the master conveyed an ancient idyll.