The artist Vasiliev was born in 1850 in the family of a poor postal official. Fedor Vasiliev's childhood was not easy, combining his studies at school, from the age of 12 he already helped his father with work at the post office. Already childhood, the artist Vasiliev was noticed by his entourage in the talent of drawing.
In 1865, his father tragically dies; at the age of fifteen, the young artist becomes the backbone of his family. He was hired by the restorer of paintings P.K. Sokolov, where he comprehended the basics of painting, showing a love for drawing, Vasiliev's creative biography began from this first stage. For his merits in drawing, he entered the evening drawing school at the OPH, after which he met many artists and merged tightly into their creative environment.
Among the artist, his main comrade in creativity was I. Kramskoy, who took care of him and helped a talented nugget beyond his years. Developing his talent, Vasilyev painted a lot of landscape paintings, sketches, often went to sketches in the forest with Ivan Shishkin, from whom he also earned respect.
Many even then venerable artists were surprised at his young talent, by 1868 he performed his first works in quality comparable to well-known artists: After the Thunderstorm, Village Street, Return of the Herd. All these first works emphasized the style, to
to which the artist Vasiliev gravitated, mainly these are paintings of the lyrical direction. The painting of the young artist was inspired by poetry and deep romanticism penetrating the soul of the viewer. Vasiliev occupied his own unique niche of creativity among artists, creating his own unique concept of landscape art.
In 1871, artists I. Repin and E. Makarov invited him on a creative trip along the Volga. Fascinated by this marvelous river, the artist creates new canvases: View of the Volga, Volga lagoons, barges, etc.
Upon his return to St. Petersburg, he painted one of his main works: The Thaw, this painting was awarded the first prize in the Society for the Encouragement of Artists. In addition to this, he was ordered a copy of this painting for the royal court.
After such events, the artist Vasiliev becomes a famous master of landscape. Everything would be fine, but the young artist was hampered by his health, at that time he caught a severe cold, provoking a more severe form of tuberculosis, quite possibly hereditary. Doctors advised him to go to Ukraine, where he visited the Crimea in Yalta.
In the Crimea, he creates a new canvas Wet Meadow, he often felt nostalgic for St. Petersburg, for Russia he did not paint this picture from nature under the impressions of the past. His Crimean paintings did not work out for him the first time, over time, he nevertheless painted a picture in 1873 in the Crimean mountains, which was highly appreciated as a noteworthy work, in the same year, on September 24, the still young artist died in the city of Yalta.
Russian fine art forever lost the brilliant artist of that time. In his short life biography, Vasilyev wrote many landscape masterpieces that conquered the whole world with their lyricism.
Vasiliev Fedor Alexandrovich-, Russian landscape painter. He studied at the Drawing School of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts in St. Petersburg, followed the advice of I. I. Shishkin (1866-67), and then studied at the Academy of Arts (1871). He was close to I. N. Kramskoy. Exceptionally gifted, V. left a deep mark on Russian art with his short artistic activity. In his painting, images of nature acquired a special poetry and depth of feeling. Written in radiant, saturated colors, full of rapture with the sensual beauty of the world, V.'s works are imbued with spirituality and romantic excitement. These features were already defined in the small-sized landscapes of 1868-69 ("The Return of the Herd", "Before the Rain" - both in the Tretyakov Gallery), which captured the life of nature in bright, spectacular moments. In these paintings, the painting style is characterized by sonorous accents of color spots, dynamism of a free brushstroke. Of great importance for V.'s work was his trip to the Volga together with I. E. Repin (1870). It resulted in drawings and paintings ("View of the Volga. Barges", 1870, Russian Museum, Leningrad; "Volga Lagoons", Tretyakov Gallery), which reflected the artist's awakening desire for a picture generalization of the landscape image, tonal unity of colors, lyrical experience of nature. Upon his return to St. Petersburg, V. created one of his main works - The Thaw (1871, Tretyakov Gallery). Imbued with melancholy and sadness, inspired by bitter thoughts about the life of the Russian village, it carries a great social content. In 1871 V. fell ill with tuberculosis and moved to Yalta. In the Crimea, based on old sketches and memoirs, he painted a wide epic canvas "Wet Meadow" (1872, Tretyakov Gallery). Strict in composition, the picture strikes with the freshness and depth of color, its rich internal gradation; it is a synthetic image of nature, fraught with a complex range of feelings. V.'s last work - "In the Crimean Mountains" (1873, Tretyakov Gallery) - is distinguished by the subtlety of color relationships, united by a common grayish-brown tone; the image of nature acquires in it a shade of heroic grandeur. In the work of V. manifested characteristic of the masters of Russian landscape painting of the 1860s and 70s. the desire to make the landscape spiritual, expressing advanced societies, ideals.In the formation of Fedor Alexandrovich as an artist, various representatives of Russian art took part, with artists of different temperament and character: I.I. Shishkin and I.N. Kramskoy, I.E. Repin and N.N. Ge, A.K. Savrasov and M.K. Klodt. But their impact on him was only mediocre.
Fedor's closest friends were Shishkin and Kramskoy. Shishkin often visited the Vasiliev family and later married the artist's sister, Evgenia Alexandrovna. In 1870 their daughter Lydia was born, and in 1871 their son Vladimir.
In the relationship between Kramskoy and Vasiliev, these two brilliant artists, one can see a single example of creative and deeply human kinship, unanimity, mutual enrichment, inspiration and admiration. As an example of free self-disclosure can be seen in their letters to each other. The "luxury of friendly communication", the freedom and joy of comprehending one's own "I" in another close and spiritually-moral person acquires fresh colors and additional satisfaction. They are genuinely proud of meeting each other. When the breath Fyodor Vasiliev froze and heart stopped, Kramskoy took care of paying his many obliging debts. The immortal "", written by Ivan Nikolaevich, was transferred to Pavel Mikhailovich Tretyakov, thereby repaying most of the debt of a close friend.
But, despite this, Kramskoy could rightfully say about Vasilyev: “His manners were self-confident and almost impudent ... he was not distinguished by silence and modesty ... these manners and tone lay in his very nature ... he the prince's funds were needed so as not to complain about life. In the people of the nineteenth century, hypocrisy was not a significant reality. The people of this century experienced very different emotions and experiences than we do now. We often hide our feelings, and people of the past could accept, love and honor any individuality, because each author has his own thoughts and goals, with which he soaks every stroke like juice. They did not turn a blind eye to moments of weakness, mistakes made, and did not ridicule human vices. The life of this gifted “wonder boy”, according to Ilya Efimovich Repin, this musician of the finest mood of landscape art, was not at all cloudless and hid a hidden irony, the origins of which lay in the difficult reality and Vasilyev’s childhood years.
The measured life of Vasiliev treated him cruelly. Behind him, the door to the future was ruthlessly closed. In the winter of 1871 Fedor Vasiliev catches a cold and falls seriously ill with consumption, which left only a short time for what had been started. A terrible disease brings the young artist to the grave after a couple of years.
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1867. Oil on canvas |
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In his words, colors and sounds, he could not predict his own fate. In his youth, with all his sorrows and joys, he looked and listened, felt and idolized, remembered every moment on earth and every drop of dew on the grass, every path overgrown with grass. He has an inexhaustible thirst to work, an inexhaustible fervent optimism to be perfect, even among his senior art colleagues. But there is very little time left, and the sunny weather of the mood will be replaced by bad weather of bitterness and despondency.
The artist was born on February 10, 1850 in Gatchina. The foster father and tutor of Vasilyev was a small letter carrier Alexander Vasilyevich Vasiliev. The elder sister and Fedor himself were born premarital children. And there were rumors that the youngest son was the illegitimate son of the aristocrat P.S. Stroganov. This circumstance left an indelible imprint on the artist. This is what did not allow Fedor Alexandrovich without a twinge of conscience to bear the father's surname and true patronymic. As well as his low rank as a volunteer student of the Academy of Arts, where he almost did not have to study.
Almost from the first steps in the field of art, P.S. Stroganov. patronized him. I must say that very unequivocal rumors about this "guardianship" circulated in the capital and beyond. The young artist was always given a warm welcome in the estates of an important nobleman. For two consecutive summers he had the opportunity to write. From all sides he was surrounded by new places, people, new impressions. “All life out! These willows and huts, cattle and people formed such pictures full of life and strength that involuntarily, for a long time after, eyes were closed and a picture rose in the head, from which hands dropped ... ”- the artist wrote.
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1867. Oil on canvas |
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In the estate of the eminent owner, Fyodor Alexandrovich lived among the thick smells of ripening Antonov apples, the blossoming of field porridge, similar to melting snow, among the fullness and contentment of “noble nests” that had not yet had time to go bankrupt ... It seemed that fate itself hurried him. There was no time for a long path of becoming and apprenticeship in his life. With the inexhaustible stubbornness of a child and with the intuitive precision of an innate poetic mood, he applied to the canvas everything that excited his imagination. He was in a hurry to capture the world around him, and not just to capture it, but to fill it with the meaning of human existence.
The school bench at Fedor also did not work out. At the age of twelve, he had to leave her, helping his stepfather in the service. Poverty, often visiting his foster father's house, forced the teenager to run from one street to another with a postman's bag for a salary of three rubles.
His work was small, but it formed into a whole world.
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Paper, sepia |
After hard work Vasilyev Jr. came home and spent the rest of his time working on drawings. His passion for drawing was shared only by his mother. The household could not understand how, after a hard and difficult day, the wayward little boy ran home and, with a thirst for creativity, began to draw, sitting in the corner of the room so as not to disturb anyone. It was the mother who was the best critic for Vasiliev's drawings, it was she who showed his first works to I.I. Shishkin, and it was Shishkin, already a well-known landscape painter at that time, who showed true faith in the artist's abilities.
Already in 1867, Vasilyev graduated with honors from the Drawing School of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, where I.N. Kramskoy. The stubborn pursuit of improvement does not change Vasiliev. There is an interesting and long road to perfection ahead, the road and understanding of which lies through the Academy. New ideas and moods made an exceptionally surprising impression on the authoritative commission of the Academy, where they enrolled him as a free student.
Almost every summer, Fedor spends the summer with Shishkin in Valaam. So this time, in 1867, Vasilyev went with Ivan Ivanovich to work on the island. The trip dragged on for five whole months, until late autumn. He becomes close to Petersburg landscape painters. Some sketches written during this period of creativity are exhibited at the Society for the Encouragement of Arts. Etude "" (1869) is acquired by the collector and philanthropist Count P.S. Stroganov.
I.I. Shishkin represented Russia as a landscape country. He taught to understand and study the life of nature. Vasiliev himself illustrates this statement in the best possible way. No enthusiastic epithets can convey all the magical charm of such a landscape as "" (1869). Soft outlines of green slopes and bare slopes. Here nature does not act as a narrative, it again and again reveals its mysterious world. Particular importance is given to color and light, their harmony and rhythm. The artist strives to give a vivid sense of life through color, constantly making discoveries so that the color is penetrated by the sun, and not the surface of the depicted. Color helps the artist to express his attitude of amazing tenderness and beauty.
At the Academy of Arts, Vasiliev works as an assistant to the restorer of the Academy, I.K. Sokolov. But Vasiliev considers the so-called Kushelev collection, a collection of paintings by Count N.A., to be his “teacher”. Kushelev - Bezborodko, donated in 1863 to the Academy of Arts. Restoring famous paintings Vasiliev had an excellent opportunity to carefully study this wonderful gallery, which featured works by leading masters of the French, Belgian and German schools: paintings by A. Achenbach, E. Meyerheim, L. Knaus, B. Vautier, J. - B. Corot, J. - J. Rousseau, Swiss landscape painter A. Kalam. (In 1992, most of the Kushelev Gallery was transferred to the State Hermitage Museum. To date, the number of paintings has decreased significantly). His closeness to the Great Masters can already be read in his paintings, such as "" (1868), "" (1868), "" (1870), "" (1869), "" (1873).
On these canvases there is nothing magnificent, spectacular. But how beautiful are this moisture-breathing grass, and a flock of flying trees in the distance, and a small slope, and a channel that is beginning to overgrow with coastal sedge! And what peace of eternity, what unsatisfied love emanates from these ordinary, everyday landscapes! It must be only the sensitively captured and conveyed mood of nature that allowed the artist to achieve such breath-stopping completeness.
In Vasiliev's elegiac landscapes, the sky is almost always filled with clouds. They are either light, like a breeze running through the water, or heavy, dark from the moisture that has soaked them. Clouds are the wandering thoughts of nature. They always embarrassed the artist's peace - both in the gloomy northern capital, where they almost did not disappear from the eyes, and on the tender land of the Crimea, where they were lacking. They always reminded him of his dear homeland.
In 1870, Vasiliev, having earned money in the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, went on a joint trip with Repin along the Volga. After this trip, Vasilyev matures, his character of seeing the world in his work changes. The Volga - mother, as it were, expands the scale of the space of the seen world, the format of landscapes is enlarged, they become more open to perception, small details and details recede. "" (1870) - with a wide shore covered with hard grass, river distances and a high sky - one of the characteristic works of this cycle.
The nature of the river is best conveyed Vasiliev in the painting "" (1870). Here the artist depicts a distant sandy shore with moored long boats, next to which are depicted the baroque. Fluffy clouds hang low above the ground, do not close the sunny and clear day. The peaceful blue sky is reflected in the smooth looking glass of water. Harmony in nature, painted in a boundless landscape style, shows the artist's ability to bring out the essence of the scene itself with natural light scenes with pure and rich colors.
During this joint trip, both artists had to observe each other's work more than once. The author of the famous Burlakov"Everything was striking in the young comrade: both close observation, and a sudden wave of inspiration that could overwhelm him at the most unexpected moment, and uninhibited skill. He felt the plasticity of each leaf, stem. All this he minted with a pointed pencil, and then generalized the picture to excellent splendor.
The 1860s - 1870s are not only the time of the general ideological and democratic rise of art, these are also the years of the formation of its new norms and principles, directly related to the aesthetics of the revolutionary democrats. Literature is represented by the movement of the "sixties" that arose and developed at that time, democratic in tasks and realistic in character. In music, this is the famous "Mighty Handful". In painting, it is the Association of Traveling Art Exhibitions. The Wanderers came out for the new art, declaring an uncompromising war on the academy. Vasiliev, together with older friends, takes part in the creation of the Association of Traveling Art Exhibitions: his signature is under the draft charter of the Association. However, due to many circumstances, Fedor Alexandrovich's participation in the Traveling Exhibitions was not long, but he was fully aware of the tasks facing this group of artists and fully shared their views. By the nature of his talent, he was a different artist than, for example, Perov or Savitsky. Landscape painting implies a different impact on the viewer than genre paintings, where some episode from life can be directly depicted, which clearly answers the question “Are the people happy?” But a true, spiritualized depiction of nature by a painter can play an equally important role in the moral education of a person, he believed. Fedor Vasiliev when he created his canvases.
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1869 - 1871. Paper, sepia. 31.3 x 46.8 |
In the history of landscape forerunner Fyodor Vasiliev consider Sylvester Shchedrin. As a rule, they draw a parallel between Vasiliev and Shishkin, between him and a galaxy of young landscape painters of the sixties. The way it is. He was given to feel the charm of the Russian landscape, to feel the fleeting joy and solemn sadness of Russian nature in such a way that Russia was guessed in every depicted bush, hillock, cloud.
In 1871 he paints a picture "". This is perhaps the only picture that brings his work closer to the principles of the art of the Wanderers. "" is a spring that has not yet come, in anticipation of its warm, serene days, this is a memory of the past, fertile spring time. This is a careful reminder of grey-haired angry blizzards, whose cold fur coat, but the time will come, will surely break through the first solar drop. Far - far takes the imagination of everyone who looks at this picture. The growing longing for the happy moments lived takes possession of the heart. Are you the only stranger in the world? And what awaits you there, ahead? The chords of quiet musical colors are heard as if from afar, filling the plane of the canvas more and more tangibly. The plot of this picture, as, indeed, of all the other canvases of Vasilyev, is extremely simple.
Two travelers, two small grains of sand snatched by the artist from the ocean of life, wander along the blurred, rutted road: a peasant with a child. Their faces are not visible, but the old man's stooped back and his knapsack, which has seen enough in its lifetime, speak volumes. Feet get stuck in wet snow. It seems that there is no way to overcome the road that stretches endlessly across the endless plain. The overhanging sky is covered with gray clouds. Away from the road, a dilapidated and abandoned village stands gloomily. She is covered in snow. Above the roof - a light warm smoke. But do not turn travelers there, do not knock on the door. There is enough of its dashing. And around - for many miles not a single living soul. Only hungry, free birds on the cold wet snow. And their migratory share, which excites the little boy, is somewhat similar to the human one. Perov's theme of a doomed, gray beggarly life, an endlessly dreary existence. Roads “endless, like human patience” (V.G. Perov), were associated with the difficulties of the life path, nature, as it were, is tormented by suffering, a silent groan is poured over the landscape, something in it is broken and overcome.
In 1871, "" won first place in the competition of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts. In the same year, the Academy sent her to the World Exhibition in London. The exhibition created the basis for international cooperation and partnership. The picture caused general admiration. But in London, few people knew that the creator of this small but beautiful canvas was then barely twenty years old.
In the next year, Fedor Aleksandrovich will no longer return to the narrative and social background of his " Thaws". Vasiliev realizes the romantic sense of nature with inspired and philosophical sounds. Kramskoy, as an astute observer, saw in his young friend "the presence of the deeply hidden pathos of a high poet", alongside the desire to see the solution of "true issues of universal interest." Another artist of the romantic direction, N. Ge, who said that Vasiliev discovered something more for Russian art, some higher meaning of the “living sky”, felt his soul mate in Vasiliev. Vasiliev imperiously and passionately carried away the life of the sky, spread over the world. Through the beauty of the cloudy world, a special meaning shines through in his paintings, which leaves behind a new and at the same time frightening sensation from touching the unknown. Clouds flying over the earth are sketches with a special world where human measurements are unbearable, a world where the heart is squeezed and a person has nothing to breathe, but where the quivering soul painfully reaches.
In 1871, on the advice of doctors, Vasiliev leaves for the Crimea, where he creates his last best works: "" (1872), "" (1871 - 1873), "" (1872), "" (1873). Living here for the last two years, on the seashore, among cypresses and acacias, Vasiliev, sick with consumption, longs for his native, familiar landscape. He did not immediately master the motifs of southern nature, which were unfamiliar to a Petersburger, and at first painted pictures based on his memories of central Russia, continuously linking the impressions he had seen from nature. He creates a gray - silver, cloudy sky of central Russia, writes his " Abandoned mill"(1871 - 1873), where the last reflection breaks through the clouds and is crushed with cold silver ripples in the water of a small pond. Nearby is a mill that has been silent for a long time. Silence. On the shore lies a dilapidated, hollowed-out wooden boat, blackened from time to time. Silent herons whiten in the water. Night will come soon.
As if shimmers with the subtlest shades of watercolor paints Fyodor Vasiliev"" (1872). The calm and tranquility that reigns in the clear air. You feel with your whole body this coolness of an early summer morning. Everything around is waking up. The glare of the sun shimmers on still water, the air is permeated with the fresh breath of green grass - everything lives and trembles in this small and excellent work, fanned by the soft mood of landscape lyrics. In a poetic corner of Russian nature, the artist placed a man in a fishing boat. An amateur fisherman is sitting intently by the pond in anticipation. The peculiarity of watercolor allowed Vasiliev to convey the changeable, subtle shades of the state of nature.
The motif of stagnant water is reflected in Vasiliev's painting "" (1872). The celestial symphony enveloped a bewitching and impenetrable mirror of water, which the artist placed in the center of the picture. You can no longer see that amber-radiant sky. The clouds are getting thicker and thicker. And it seems, here - here, somewhere with a careful light, the past sudden and gusty thunderstorm will turn into a clear and sunny day. But no, the countless tears of recent bad weather have not yet dried up the sun. It took him only a month and a half to pour this song that had long accumulated in his soul onto the canvas. Soon the new and last work of the painter Fyodor Alexandrovich Vasiliev will appear at the competition of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts.
To his permanent addressee I.N. Kramskoy, Vasiliev wrote: “My dear Ivan Nikolaevich! If you knew how painfully the heart contracts from a heavy foreboding! Will it not be possible for me to breathe again this freedom, this life-giving force of the morning waking up above the steaming water?
Depicting the nature of the Crimea, Vasiliev always gives us an understanding of the landscape as a place where the life of the people flows, where a person reflects on his fate and the fate of the world. And looking at the beauty of the sky, trees, stones, a person himself becomes better and cleaner, and everything beautiful in his soul receives support in the immortal beauty of nature.
The lower the twilight fell over the days of the artist, the more difficult it became for him to breathe, the more he wanted air, sky, light. He paints his last landscape "" (1873). He draws pine trees, firmly holding their roots to the ground and just as imperiously stretching their tops up. The symbolism of this idea does not need to be explained.
At the beginning of March 1873, the painting was sent to Ivan Nikolaevich Kramskoy for transfer to the next competition of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts. The tormented, sick man was looking forward to news from the exhibition, and especially - the words of a friend wise in everyday life and art. Ivan Nikolaevich took the picture as a revelation. In his response letter, which came quickly, there was such an assessment of his latest work, which hitherto had not yet been heard. “A real picture is no longer like anything, does not imitate anyone, does not have the slightest, even remote resemblance to any artist, to any school. This is something so original and isolated from all influences, standing outside the entire current movement of art, that I can only say one thing: this is not good yet; not quite good, even bad in places, but it's brilliant ... "
The painting "" is outwardly discreet, almost monochrome, but it contains a lyrical richness of colors. Multi-colored monochromes in the picture enter into rivalry between green, brown, pearl gray and purple tones. Such an incredible wealth of tonal transitions involuntarily captures the viewer's attention. This harmony of the finest transitions creates a sense of the coloristic structure and musicality of the landscape.
The range of emotional richness of the palette is amazing in landscapes Vasiliev. Next to the gray symphony of the landscape "" is adjacent brightly shining and iridescent fiery - golden colors of such paintings as "" or "", a shimmering overflow of emerald shades of "mysterious mystery" filling with awe of life " Abandoned mill". Vasiliev had an exceptionally developed sense of color. He was able to allocate content value to it. Color for him was the predominant means of great emotional expressiveness, through which he directly influenced the soul of all living things.
The success of the last picture was decisive, and the artist had to live a few months. But, despite this, rarely, only during the most severe bouts of consumption, he let go of the brush. The lyrical thread between his heart and nature did not break for a minute.
His painting "", his ascent to the pinnacle of mastery, became for Russian art an example of the possibility of deep philosophical generalizations in the landscape genre. This testament was subsequently accepted by Levitan, who continued in the picture "" reflections on the eternal and the mortal, the infinite and the finite in the life of nature and man.
The life of the excellent landscape painter F. A. Vasiliev can be compared to a flash of light. In his twenty-three years, he was able to transform the Russian landscape, creating a special "face" of Russian nature, which became a kind of national symbol. Nobody ever doubted his genius. It is consonant with such an important category as "simplicity". Maybe that's why his work penetrates the soul of each of us.
Biography of F. A. Vasiliev
Fedor Aleksandrovich Vasiliev was born in 1850 in Gatchina (the former residence of Emperor Paul I (1754-1801)) near St. Petersburg in the family of a poor official Alexander Vasilyevich Vasiliev. Soon after the birth of their son Fedor, the family moved to St. Petersburg.
The move only worsened her financial situation: her father spent most of her earnings on drink and lost at cards. At the age of 12, Fedor got a job at the post office. He gave the money he earned to his mother every month for housekeeping. The boy could draw only in the evenings or on weekends. After the death of his father, Fedor (he was fifteen at that time) becomes the sole breadwinner for his mother, sister and two younger brothers.
From a young age, caring for others became a habit and formed a sense of purpose in Vasiliev's character. Deciding to become an artist, he acted consistently and prudently. As a teenager, he began attending evening classes at the Drawing School of the Society for the Encouragement of Artists. At the same time he became an assistant to the restorer of the Academy of Arts P. K. Sokolov.
The talent of the young man was immediately noticed. The teacher I. N. Kramskoy invited him to the Artel of Artists (the predecessor of the Association of Traveling Art Exhibitions). The young man delighted his new friends with his wit and sparkle in improvising a drawing. In the Artel, Fedor was treated as an equal.
I. E. Repin recalled:
“Everyone was drawn to him, and he himself vigilantly and quickly grasped all the phenomena around him.”
Friends were surprised by his demeanor. By origin, a raznochinets (mother Olga Emelyanovna Polyntseva is a bourgeois, father Alexander Vasilyevich Vasiliev is a petty official), he presented himself as at least a count. It is hard to imagine how the young man managed to mislead those who did not know him intimately with his secular gloss and ease of treatment. The illegitimate son (his parents lived in an unmarried marriage) had a hard time going through his “dual” position.
Subsequently, when the family already had four children, A.V. Vasiliev married O.E. Polyntseva, but the elder Fedor and Evgenia remained illegitimate (the father did not recognize them as relatives, and did not enter them in his documents). In 1870, the artist received a passport issued by the St. Petersburg Meshchanskaya Council, where he is recorded with the patronymic "Viktorovich". It is believed that the father of Fyodor Vasilyev was probably Count Pavel Sergeevich Stroganov (the artist had a rather warm relationship with the count).
At the age of seventeen, Vasiliev leaves the Drawing School and goes with I. I. Shishkin (they met a year earlier) to Valaam. Here the young artist spends a fruitfully happy half a year. Works written on Lake Ladoga, upon returning to St. Petersburg, were presented at the OPH exhibition. The first exhibition brought fame to Vasiliev in artistic circles.
The artist was a city dweller. In the summer of 1868 he went to Konstantinovka near Krasnoye Selo near St. Petersburg. Acquaintance with village life gave him new ideas. The impressions of this year were reflected in the paintings “After the Thunderstorm”, “Village Street”, “Return of the Steel”.
In 1869, for the painting "The Return of the Herd" he was awarded the first prize at the OPH competition. It was a well-established painter, whose paintings aroused genuine admiration. He was the exception to the rule. It is considered a great rarity in art when a young talent becomes immediately clear to the public. The “boy of genius” was honorably received in aristocratic circles and among St. Petersburg bohemia.
Count Stroganov, who patronizes the artist, invites him to live in his vast estates in the Tambov region and Khoten. These trips brought Vasiliev closer to the countryside and Central Russian nature. The artist described his attitude to the village in a letter to a friend:
“I enjoyed everything, sympathized with everything and was surprised - everything was new ... A village suddenly emerged from around the corner of the grove and riveted all the attention: tiny thatched houses, like a caravan, were installed in a disorderly and picturesque order. Cranes (wells) stood along the street with mud trodden around them and a log in which pigs were lying, children were washing, and all kinds of domestic creatures were walking around.
In these observations, as in rural paintings, there is no critical note. The impressions of the landscape painter are full of enthusiasm and immediacy.
In 1870, Vasiliev, together with I. E. Repin and E. K. Makarov, went to the Volga.
Since 1871, the artist entered the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts as a freelance student. At the competition of the Society for the Encouragement of Artists, he receives the first prize for the painting "The Thaw".
Vasiliev's works are sold like hot cakes. Cheerful by nature, the artist recklessly disposes of the large amounts of money that suddenly fell down: he spends them on mind-blowing hats and suits for himself, toys for his brothers, gifts for his mother ...
Bohemian life is increasingly attracting the artist. However, he finds time for both entertainment and work. Lacking good health (during his childhood, his family lived in a damp apartment on Vasilevsky Island), Fedor Aleksandrovich can hardly stand the frantic rhythm and frivolously refers to a prolonged “dry cough”.
One winter in 1871, heated up from skating, he boyishly eats a few handfuls of snow, which later shortened his life by decades. Immediately after the winter walk, the painter felt unwell. A little later, a mild cold turned into a serious illness. In the spring, doctors discovered consumption in him and recommended him to be treated in the south. Probably, the young man neglected the advice of doctors and instead of Yalta he went to the estate of Count Stroganov near Sumy, Khoten. It was at the end of May.
In July, Khoten turned out to be “insufficient south” and the artist had to go to the Crimea, his last forced refuge. The money was running out fast. Strength was depleted. Doctors forbade walking and moving from room to room. And now they advise him to reduce the work to an hour a day. In 1872, the Academy of Arts awarded Vasiliev the title of artist of the 1st degree with the obligation to pass the exam in the scientific course. In the Crimea, the artist is visited by I. N. Kramskoy and P. M. Tretyakov.
His condition worsened: he was forbidden to talk so as not to bother his throat (in recent months he used "conversational notebooks"). The disease overcame, and the artist hoped for a postponement of the end, although life already seemed to him over. His mother did not tell him anything, neither what the doctors told her, nor what she herself guessed. From her quiet, sad steps and from her aged face, Vasiliev understood everything.
He yearned for Russia, recalled a trip with friends to the Volga. Here are the lines from the letter to I. N. Kramskoy:
“I miss Russia and don’t believe in Crimea.”
The last days were brightened up by work, letters and visits of friends. The artist dreamed of seeing Russia again someday, but his life inexorably faded away in the arms of his mother. Fedor Alexandrovich Vasiliev died in 1873 at the dawn of his fame.
Kramskoy wrote:
“He died on the threshold of a new phase in the development of his talent, very original and original. I think that he was destined to bring into the Russian landscape what the latter lacked and still lacks: poetry with a natural performance.
The posthumous exhibition of Vasiliev, organized by Kramskoy, did not take place. The master's paintings were sold out before its opening.
"Thaw" (1871)
Endless Russian expanses. In the foreground, a river awakened from the spring warmth. Its entire loose surface is lined with deep traces of sleigh runners flooded with dark melt water. Curving river leads the viewer into the depths of the picture, increasing its space. Mighty giant pines stand behind the river, behind them friendly rows of trees diverge in breadth, forming the border between an endless gray plain and a huge sky with thick clouds hanging low from moisture.
A hut with a blind window perched on the very bank of the river. There is still snow on the roof. White smoke rises crookedly from the chimney into the sky. The ladder attached to the roof slanted. Even she got slippery. Scout rooks have just arrived on the other side. They bathe and roam nimbly in search of food. A large flock of rooks that appeared in the distance is about to sit on the ground. An old man and a girl came out to meet the harbingers of spring. Standing in the middle of the river, they give the landscape a certain gloom. A rook flying towards the viewer with spread wings, a melted river, as it were, enliven the picture, confirming the approach of the long-awaited spring.
The painting "Thaw" was a huge success in artistic circles. Two months after receiving the prize at the OPH competition, Vasiliev makes a copy of it at the request of Grand Duke Alexander Alexandrovich (Alexander III). In 1872, the Thaw was delivered by the Academy of Arts to the World Exhibition in London. One of the British newspapers wrote:
“We would like Mr. Vasilyev to come to us in London and paint our London streets during the rapid thaw ... Isn’t he a real artist for this task!”
In Vasiliev's landscape, even a viewer inexperienced in landscape painting will notice the deep knowledge of nature and Russian reality inherent in A.K. Savrasov. "Thaw" in artistic style resembles the most famous canvas. A painting by A. K. Savrasov “The Caves Monastery near Nizhny Novgorod” was exhibited with the Vasilyevsky landscape, which then received the second prize.
"Abandoned Mill" (1872)
In front of us is an old mill pond surrounded by wild thickets of bushes and trees. The entire environment surrounding the pond gives an abandoned look.
Under the tall crooked trees stands a wooden mill darkened by time. Its strong roof has not yet decayed. No human has set foot here for many years. Pink clouds reflect on the marsh surface. Herons standing in the water feel like real owners here.
The black boat, shaded by reeds, reminds the viewer of the Little Russian legends, according to which girls drowned in the mill ponds from unhappy love, later turning into mermaids.
Sketches for the painting were created before leaving for the Crimea in the estate of Count Stroganov, Khoten. The picture itself was painted in the Crimea during the illness of the artist. F. A. Vasiliev was hard to bear the separation from Russian nature. He missed communicating with St. Petersburg friends. He lacked rare meetings with colleagues, so in his correspondence with them he shares his plans for the future, talks about his paintings.
Vasiliev's letters, which are of particular value, contain the author's information about the works of the Crimean period. “The Abandoned Mill” refers to a number of Crimean canvases, but none of the letters mentions it. Apparently this work was very important for the master. It so happened that at the posthumous exhibition, before the opening of which all the paintings were sold out, this painting did not pay much attention. After a while, "The Abandoned Mill" was recognized as one of the best works of the artist.
"Swamp in the Forest" (1872)
Little is known about the history of the painting. The artist did not report anything about her in his epistolary conversation with friends. It was written in the same year as The Abandoned Mill. , squeezed by mountains, inspired the artist less than the details of the Russian landscape.
The author of the picture presented his beloved swampy and birch land, left to him forever. In the foreground is a huge swamp open to the sky, where white herons live. Flaming autumn foliage favorably emphasizes the sky covered with lead clouds.
In the painting "Swamp in the Forest" Vasiliev expressed his love for Russian nature, for vast fields, for humid forests, for the pure colors of Central Russian autumn.
In a letter to Kramskoy, Vasiliev wrote:
"Oh swamp, swamp! How painfully the heart shrinks from a heavy foreboding! Well, if I fail to breathe again this freedom, this life-giving force of the morning waking up above the steaming water? After all, they will take everything from me, everything, if they take this. After all, I, as an artist, will lose more than half.
"In the Crimean mountains" (1873)
The landscape "In the Crimean Mountains" is one of the last works of the artist's creative legacy. Here is presented a new, special artistic view of Vasilyev on the nature of the Crimea.
In the foreground of the picture is a dusty, well-worn road, along which a wagon drawn by oxen is slowly dragged uphill. Tired animals go through the force. Their owner walks behind the wagon, pushing it along difficult sections of the path. Dry pine branches stick out along the edges of the road.
The central place in the landscape is occupied by tall pines. However, their appearance is more reminiscent of the northern nature of Russia, for which the author yearned.
In the background are huge rocky mountains with low clouds, which gives majesty and mystery.
It is no coincidence that Kramskoy called this painting "a symphony of the greatness of nature."
"Wet Meadow" (1872)
The painting "Wet Meadow" was painted in the Crimea. The impetus for its creation was the artist's strong longing for his homeland, loneliness and a feeling of "uncomfort" among the non-native southern nature. The work is based on sketches made in Ukraine and the author's memories of Central Russian and Northern Russian places.
Quiet water in the form of a backwater, a swamp, a stream is a through motif of Vasiliev's work.
In the painting “Wet Meadow”, the artist focused his attention on an ordinary meadow flooded with water after a summer rain. Two-thirds of the canvas is occupied by the sky with blue and white clouds running across it. To the left stretched clay slope. On the right are sprawling trees that seem to divide the landscape into two parts: nature after a thunderstorm and nature during a thunderstorm. The change of weather is so skillfully shown.
In the foreground, a swampy backwater is shown, surrounded by grass, wet and sparkling from raindrops that have settled on it. The weather is starting to clear up. The wind subsides. The sun has already appeared. Water and air in the distance are as if penetrated by its light.
Thunder rumbles through the trees. The foggy distance tells us about the downpour that has just begun there.
Kramskoy wrote about the picture with delight:
“I don’t know a single work of the Russian school where it would be so charmingly worked out. And then some happy fantastic light, very special, and at the same time so natural that I can’t take my eyes off it.”
This masterpiece is considered an example of Russian realistic landscape of the second half of the 19th century. It feels emotional excitement and romantic generalization of the author, which does not in the least interfere with the realistic transfer of the landscape.
It is impossible not to note in the canvas the “plainness” of the plot, the compositional rigor, and the restrained coloring. The color solution is reduced to the ratio of green and blue. At the same time, tonal diversity is masterfully conveyed. Vasiliev had an unusually deep sense of the tone. He wrote:
“I feel painfully these subtle transitions from one tone to another…”.
In the 1860s and 1870s, realism was established in Russian painting. Vasiliev, Kuindzhi left high subjects for the image of simple, inexpressive Russian nature. Having depicted on their canvas an ordinary river, a simple swamp or a tree, they created symbols of Russian nature, filled with deep meaning, corresponding to the ideas of artists about the life of the country, its natural wealth.
The creative path of the artist
F. A. Vasiliev attracted attention as an artist during his studies at the Drawing School. Kramskoy wrote about the young talent:
“In drawing and painting from nature, he was extremely quickly oriented: he almost immediately guessed how to approach the subject, what was not essential, and where to start. He studied in such a way that it seemed as if he were living another time and that he was left with something long forgotten only to remember. He worked passionately; apathy and absent-mindedness did not break into him at a time when he had a pencil in his hands, or, rather, mechanically, without the participation of his heart, he could not work.
Ivan Nikolayevich Kramskoy was Vasiliev's first teacher. The second teacher, according to contemporaries, was Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin. They met in 1866 and worked side by side in the open air for almost two years. Shishkin followed the tradition of the Düsseldorf school, while Vasiliev tried not to imitate anyone directly. However, the older comrade still had a significant impact on the young artist.
Thanks to Shishkin's calm and meticulous naturalism, some of the "irascibility" of Vasiliev's early manner was replaced by restrained and thoughtful poetry. Shishkin engendered in a young friend a love for careful observation of nature and a need for analysis.
According to Kramskoy, the first successes of Fyodor Vasilyev were connected with drawing. In drawing, he showed himself to be a talented master. His numerous drawings are valuable in the artistic heritage of Russia. He prepared his framed pencil works as sketches for future paintings. In painting, he remained more of a draftsman, working with small brushes (in his opinion, small kolinsky brushes are “good for sculpting and drawing molds”). The artist did not recognize large brushes. In his attitude to the painter's tools, there was a lot from the draftsman's approach.
Vasiliev showed himself as a painter after Valaam, where he worked with I. I. Shishkin for several months. The sketches brought from Valaam spoke of the young painter's maturity and his own worldview. Thanks to the successful Valaam sketches, Vasiliev entered the Artel of Artists on an equal footing. In the Artel, he met I. E. Repin, then a student at the Academy of Arts. After a while, both friends will make a joint trip to the Volga. The idea to go to the Volga belonged to Vasiliev, who was aware that Repin was collecting material on the “bourgeois theme”.
In the book Far Close, Repin recalled:
“For ten minutes, if the ship was stationary, his finely sharpened pencil, with the speed of a machine sewing needle, scribbled on a small sheet of his pocket album and depicted correctly and impressively the whole picture of a steep bank with houses, fences, stunted trees and pointed bell towers in the distance ... Everything is caught by Vasiliev's magic pencil: both the figurine on the move and the horse on the run, until the very command of the steamer: "Give me the chalk!" The steamer started off, the magician slammed the album, which habitually dived into his side pocket ... "
The expanses of the Volga made an indelible impression on Vasiliev.
Kramskoy wrote:
“His success at this time was enormous. He brought many drawings, sketches, completed paintings and even more plans. Although it was impossible to say about anything that something, for example, was completely original, the very manner of work was already original.
Repin gave an enthusiastic assessment of Vasilyevsky's work of those years:
“We started slavishly imitating Vasiliev and believed him.”
The summer of 1870 was serenely happy. In July 1871, the terminally ill artist leaves for the Crimea. At first he hoped to return to his homeland, but with each passing month the hope weakened. In August 1871, Kramskoy found Vasiliev haggard, but full of new plans. The Crimean period became the most significant in the artist's work. Vasiliev worked hard, because he simply could not live otherwise. In Yalta, he worked on commissioned works, as the money was spent on treatment and accommodation. Over time, the beauty of the Crimea was revealed to him: the high sky, gorges, constrained by mountain steeps, the Crimean haze with a sinking line of descent of the sky and the sea ...
At this time he writes:
“I develop a sense of each individual tone to a disgrace, which I am terribly afraid of sometimes. This is understandable: where I clearly see the tone, others may not see anything or see a gray and black place. The same thing happens in music: sometimes a musician has a developed ear to such an extent that his motives seem monotonous to others ... A picture that is true to nature should not dazzle in any place, should not be divided by sharp features into colored shreds ... "
In another letter, Vasilyev talks about the Crimean spring:
“If you paint a picture consisting of this blue air and mountains alone, without a single cloud, and convey it as it is in nature, then, I am sure, the criminal intention of a person looking at this picture, full of grace and endless triumph, and purity nature, will be naked and will show himself in all his ugly nakedness.
Vasiliev felt himself to be an intermediary between nature and himself. He did not strive for a photographically accurate reproduction of nature, creating pictures-memories, pictures-dreams in the Crimean period, and, nevertheless, he could see all the shades of the states of nature.
Vasiliev was fascinated by the borderline states of nature. In many of his works (“Volga bank after a thunderstorm”, “After heavy rain”, “Evening before a thunderstorm”, “Before the rain”, “After the rain”), instantaneous states of the landscape are recorded. Depicting rain, downpour, thunderstorm, he sought to present the effects produced by them at the initial stage and at the end.
The life of the brilliant artist F. A. Vasilyev was cut short by an untimely death. After almost a century and a half since his death, Vasiliev's paintings still excite the viewer. According to Nikolai Ge, Vasiliev opened the living sky to Russian landscape painting, and his entire “Mozartian” fate showed everyone that the life account is not at all for the years lived, but for how ready a person is to see, be surprised, rejoice, love and create.
Vasiliev's stunning paintings have a powerful effect on children and adults, causing admiration. They are understandable to a child of preschool and primary school age. Children must be told about the fate and work of Vasiliev. During his short life, he left a huge creative legacy.
It was a brilliant artist who managed to "deceive" the time.
Dear reader! I confess that it is impossible to write about the fate of Vasiliev without tears and without delight. What paintings by Vasiliev do you like? What attracts you to the work of the artist?
Being an artist from the circle of Alexei Savrasov, Vasilyev touchingly and lyrically sang the nature of his native land. The paintings of Fyodor Vasiliev preserve for posterity a collective image of their native nature.
Such a short life!
Yes, the life of the artist Fyodor Vasiliev was really very short: he lived only twenty-three years. But even less was allotted to him for creativity - only five years. However, the creative heritage of the artist allows you to admire his penetration and depth.
Vasiliev was born not far from St. Petersburg, in the small town of Gatchina on February 10, 1850. His father was a petty postal clerk.
Fedor showed an early ability to draw. This passion later determined his fate. From the age of twelve, Fyodor Vasiliev was forced to go to work in the postal department, at the Main Post Office. However, he did not work there for long, left the service and began studying at the Drawing School of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts. In the evenings, he still worked in the restoration workshop of P. K. Sokolov. This work provided additional opportunities for learning by doing. In addition to Sokolov, the creative development of the artist was influenced by such masters of painting as Ivan Nikolaevich Kramskoy and Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin, who taught at the drawing school. Both of them belonged to the movement of the Wanderers, who left the walls of the Academy of Arts due to disagreement with the traditions and views on art that prevailed in the academic school. It was thanks to this that the Drawing School was opened, among the founders of which were Kramskoy and Shishkin.
Two Landscape Painters: A Story of Friendship
Shishkin was not only Vasiliev's teacher, but soon after meeting he became friends with his family, which also had two brothers and a sister, Evgenia. Later, I. I. Shishkin became related to Vasiliev: his wife Fyodor Vasiliev was a sister.
I. I. Shishkin devoted a lot of time to Fedor, introducing him to landscape painting. One of the important events in the fate of Vasiliev was a trip with Shishkin to Valaam. The trip to sketches took place in the summer of 1867, and the following year Shishkin spent the summer with Fyodor Vasiliev's family in Konstantinovka.
It was thanks to Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin that Vasiliev learned to observe nature and distinguish the smallest details and nuances in it. Since then, in the soul of the young artist, a lyrical perception of the Russian land has developed, a special ability to become one with the surrounding world.
tribute to the great master
It was Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin with Ivan Nikolaevich Kramskoy and the writer Grigorovich who, after the death of Fyodor Vasiliev, organized his posthumous exhibition. All paintings from this exhibition were sold out. It is known that Pavel Tretyakov himself, the founder and owner of the art gallery, now known to us as the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, bought eighteen paintings at once. And later, he acquired another part of the paintings from his heirs. The money received for the paintings was given to the Society for the Encouragement of Arts in repayment of Vasiliev's debt, part - to Tretyakov also for debts, and all that was left was given to the landscape painter's mother.
I. I. Shishkin erected a tombstone on the grave of Fyodor Alexandrovich Vasiliev at the Polikurovsky (Staromasandrovsky) cemetery in Yalta. This monument has not reached our time, since the grave was lost during the Great Patriotic War, and later found, but without a tombstone. The modern monument was erected only in 1963 and did not repeat the previous one.
F. Vasiliev and I. Repin: teacher and student
Another famous painter, Ilya Efimovich Repin, also played an important role in shaping the personality and skill of the artist.
Together with Vasiliev, he made a trip to the Volga lands. Repin, being a master of the domestic genre, was also a very good landscape painter. For a whole month, they not only enjoyed the Volga nature, but also painted amazingly beautiful landscapes of the places where they stopped. In landscapes, the young Repin tried to "slavishly imitate" Vasiliev, who admired him. Activity and grasp, the keen eye of the artist who noticed everything, the accuracy of the stroke and line, the enormous capacity for work and incredible diligence, the amazing vision of the moment and place - that's what struck Repin in Vasiliev. In his memoirs, he even called him a teacher, whom all the participants of the trip sought to imitate.
The role of Count Stroganov in the fate of Fyodor Alexandrovich Vasiliev
In 1969, Count Stroganov showed special attention to the work of the young artist. Pavel Sergeevich not only acquired his paintings, but also invited him to his estate Znamenskoye in the Tambov province.
In 1971, when Vasiliev caught a bad cold after skating and suffered from a severe cough, Stroganov was very concerned about his condition. Doctors made a terrible diagnosis - pulmonary tuberculosis. Count Pyotr Sergeevich invited Fyodor Aleksandrovich Vasiliev to his estate in the Kharkov province in the summer, realizing the need for climate change. However, this could not help Vasilyev recover.
Then Stroganov sends Fyodor Vasiliev to Yalta, where the sick artist continues to undermine his health, spending 10-12 hours a day at work. Contributes to such a rich activity and the arrival in Yalta of Kramskoy, no less a workaholic than Vasiliev. All this leads to the complete exhaustion of the body of a young painter. The talented and not fully realized artist Fyodor Vasiliev dies in the spring of 1873.
Characteristics of creativity
The canvases of Fyodor Vasiliev, although they belong to the period of the Wanderers in painting, are very different from the paintings of the Wanderers, first of all, by the peculiarity of working with color. Instead of a mean and restrained coloring, the painter experimented with "adjacent tones". Therefore, Vasiliev's paintings are characterized by brightness and saturation of the color scheme.
The painter's work can be conditionally divided into periods: before the "Thaw" and after the "Thaw" according to the nature of the compositional construction. In the early works of Fyodor Vasiliev, a three-dimensional construction of the picture is used, but in The Thaw he no longer uses it, which achieves a special effect in conveying his new vision of nature and the world. As for the "Crimean" cycle of works, it should be noted that the master did not immediately appreciate the unusual beauty of southern nature, but went to it for a long time.
The painting that brought the celebrity
Every artist probably has a picture, after writing which "he woke up famous." Such a picture in the work of Fyodor Vasiliev was the painting "The Thaw", written in 1871, two years before his death. The canvas was already filled with a sense of tragedy and hopelessness.
The painting depicts a broken rural road that winds like a snake, riddled with sledges and carts, leading to the horizon. What time of year is reflected in the canvas? Most likely winter during the thaw period, but possibly early spring. In both cases, the motif of the thaw or the coming spring seems to be the artist’s hope for recovery or for a bright path to the still unknown distance... Stunted bushes and sleeping gloomy trees, a dilapidated hut on the side of the road - as if a symbol of a difficult period in the life of the master, and two people - a child with his enthusiastic and naive light worldview and an old man, wise with experience, with a philosophical attitude to life - an allegory of the "I" of the artist "before" and "now", which came as a result of a long rethinking of his attitude to the universe.
The painting is now on display at the Tretyakov Gallery. It is made in oil on canvas and has small dimensions - 55.5x105.5 cm.
Masterpieces: painting by Fyodor Vasiliev "Wet Meadow"
This picture was painted by Vasiliev already in the Crimea, but is dedicated to the nature of central Russia. The master was very homesick for his favorite places and wrote it from memory. To some extent, the image of nature created in this canvas is collective, the way it was formed over the years of creativity in the mind of the author. But Vasilyev portrayed the places quite real - he relied on sketches preserved in a small notebook, which was always in his pocket.
The color and light solution of the picture is amazing: the use of a huge palette of shades of green, a subtle, but quite obvious source of light, as if penetrating through a milky white hue, giving the light a slightly yellowish, almost creamy tone.
Such a native landscape for all of us! The sky, which has not yet cleared from the thunderstorm, but through the clouds a ray of the sun is already shining through, highlighting the flowers in the foreground of the canvas with light reflections, the green cover of the meadow, washed by rain and part of the reservoir - on the right side of the picture. Its left side, which depicts a narrow path leading to the shore, islands of weeping trees and a foggy forest on the horizon, still remains in the grip of the past bad weather. It is possible that the author, who left at that time for a cure in the Crimea, reflected his hope for recovery in the work, but unambiguously poured out his longing for his native land.
This painting was the last in a series of paintings depicting the nature of the central part of the Russian land. "Wet Meadow" by Fyodor Vasiliev - a canvas that was awarded the prize of the Society for the Encouragement of Artists.
Last picture in life
This picture, which closed Vasiliev's "Crimean" cycle, was the work "In the Crimean Mountains". And again we see the subtle work of the artist with the lighting solution of the picture: the light gradually thickens in waves - in the direction from the lower right to the upper left corner of the canvas, glaring at the arba lagging behind to the left, to which two bulls are harnessed. Moreover, only the front part of the arba with a man in a white robe reclining in it turns out to be in the illuminated zone. The rest of the vehicle and the person near its wheel are in a darker area. The upper part of the picture is illuminated in the same way: the grassy slope on the right side of the picture is well lit, but the gorge on the left is in shadow. At the same time, the uppermost part of the canvas - the sky - is illuminated entirely. But the upper left corner is slightly lighter. The source of light, as it were from within, through the heavens, illuminates the earth, gradually moving the light. There is a feeling of the movement of the light field, and it seems that everything that the author wrote is about to be illuminated by light.
This work was submitted to the competition of the Society for the Support of Artists, in which it won first place. Written shortly before his death, the work seems to be a hymn to the ascent to the light of eternal life, to something unknown that awaited Fyodor Vasilyev there, in heaven.
