Isaac Ilyich Levitan is an artist who rightfully gained a reputation as the creator of the “mood landscape”. Nature in his picturesque creations shines with a gentle light of love. Such is Levitan’s painting “Birch Grove”, which the master created at the age of twenty-nine.
The origins
The artist’s biography is shrouded in mystery - he did not like to talk about personal circumstances, childhood and family, during his life he destroyed his entire archive. The packet of letters found after his death contained a “signature stamp”: “Burn without reading,” which was done. From the few memoirs of contemporaries, it can be established that Levitan very early showed the gift of a draftsman and joined this type of art. At 13, he became a student at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. His teachers were Polenov and Savrasov - then the most famous Russian artists. Levitan's painting "Birch Grove" reminds us of the inextricable and deep connection that unites our landscape painters, who so keenly felt the temper of wonderful Russian nature.
Landscape painter who has no equal
The paintings of teachers captured the imagination of young Levitan. He was especially 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 young Levitan a bit like the manner of the teacher. Elegistic moods, twilight shades, gloomy and brooding objects - swamps, whirlpools, abandoned rural graveyards - all demonstrated the closeness of the aesthetics of Levitan canvases to Savrasov’s creative manner.
But very soon the student demonstrated his own picturesque “language”, by which everyone now unmistakably recognizes him.
Painting Levitan "Birch Grove": the story of creation
These were years of rapprochement with the wonderful Russian writer Anton Chekhov. Together with the Chekhov family, Levitan was resting in a estate near Moscow near the village of Babkino. It was there that the magnificent picture of Levitan “Birch Grove” was born. The master created it for four years, having completed work on the Volga, in the city ​​of Ples. Today this masterpiece is on display at the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow.
The breath of the Russian forest
The description of Isaac Levitan's painting “Birch Grove” should begin with the fact that the real object, from which the artist painted trees shining with pearls and emeralds, was Plesskaya Grove.
The mood of unaccountable joy, freshness and optimism exudes this small but expressive picture. How does Levitan achieve such emotional strength? Of course, there is a fusion of skill and harmony, which formed the basis of the artist’s inner world.
The play of light and shadow
What makes Levitan's picture “Birch Grove” attractive for a specialist? An analysis of the techniques and techniques that the artist uses allows us to restore the unique features of the master’s brush. The entire space of the picture is filled only with grass, in which blue and yellow sparkles of flowers sparkle, with trunks, shiny green crowns: the sky is not visible, neither the beast nor the bird flickers anywhere. Nevertheless, the forest lives! We feel his fresh breath, we hear the cheerful rustle of foliage. The artist skillfully conveys the movement of warm rays, spiritualizing the landscape with trembling tenderness and joy. Two birches in the foreground are striking in lyricism and verisimilitude. Pink and warm brown spots lay softly on the trunks. The picture resembles the spontaneity and easy clean rhythm of impressionism.
Contemporaries claim that Levitan's friend Anton Pavlovich Chekhov told the author that in this picture, like in no other, the smile of a brilliant artist is felt.