The mark on art history can be left in many ways. Someone creates unfading masterpieces, and someone carefully collects and collects them to pass on to descendants. The genius of Ilya Ostroukhov happily united these two abilities. He collected paintings and samples of ancient Russian painting, which he himself restored. Another passion of an outstanding collector was creativity. In the constellation of Russian artists of the XIX century, Ilya Semenovich Ostroukhov rightfully takes his place . “Golden Autumn” - a famous landscape created in 1887, right from a traveling exhibition, where stars of the first magnitude showed their canvases, got into the Tretyakov Gallery.
Description of the artwork "Golden Autumn"
Ostroukhov was not attracted by the traditional path in painting: he began his experiments not with painstaking drawing of plaster busts and watercolor sketches, but immediately made oil copies of landscapes of his favorite masters - Kamenev and Polenov. Then the master began to paint his own landscapes in the open air and amazed contemporaries with the sophistication and lightness of color. If we start the description of the painting “Golden Autumn” by Ostroukhov with the remark that it is all permeated with air and light, then you have to end with the words that it conceals a whole gamut of feelings - from admiration to anxiety.
Here, the artist refuses the usual manner for him to build a landscape on the subtle transitions of soft tones. The beauty of the autumn forest struck him with the rich color of leaves and branches.
Compositional solution to the picture
Ostroukhov builds the composition in three planes: slender maple trunks that shine through the fireworks of the leaves, where there are all shades of yellow-gold in the foreground. The artist in detail conveys the expressive beauty of carved maple leaves, covering the ground with a sparkling carpet. Then the master deepens the space, showing on the middle plan of the composition a path lost in the forest. And here the description of the painting “Golden Autumn” by Ostroukhov concerns an unusual phenomenon for the landscape - the plot! And what else can you call a lively dialogue of two forty walking along an empty path? White-faced birds pecking seeds that fell on the track, busily looking for crawling under the grass and knots of beetles, turn the picture into a story about the uninterrupted cycle of life. The earth no longer absorbs the bliss of the sun, but its heat was trapped in the lemon-yellow and pink leaves, which slowly fall and mix with the brown grass. The sharp color contrast is weakened in the depth of the image, in the background of the picture. Only the clear blue of the sky, sharply peering through the crowns of trees, recalls it. The bizarre bends of black trunks in the distance compositionally close the picturesque space.
The mood of the canvas
Wonderful and solemn time - autumn full of colors. Why does Ostroukhov's “Golden Autumn” painting contain so many secrets and hidden anxieties? Is it because this time of year is variable, inconstant? Just yesterday, the most delicate azure of heaven and the golden sheen of trees caressed our eyes, and today the grass faded with crispy hoarfrost, and thin trunks were defenselessly exposed ... Finishing the description of the painting “Golden Autumn” by Ostroukhov, one cannot fail to note that the work combines the direct freshness of a sketch depicting mood, and philosophically meaningful image of nature.
The artist addressed the theme of autumn more than once, and always these canvases concealed a special grace, freshness and depth.