The description of a pictorial work with a landscape image is traditionally a traditional task in both the primary and middle school levels. For many years, Russian schoolchildren have been invited to write an essay on the painting "Rooks Have Arrived" by A. K. Savrasov. Its plot is simple, and it is this simplicity that causes difficulties, since in order to see the depth lurking behind it, a rather rich aesthetic experience is needed, which most often the student does not yet have.
The meaning of the task and the general goals of the essay
The meaning of the task is to expand the boundaries of the child’s understanding of the painting, to develop the ability to contemplate and comprehend painting.
In order for the composition to turn out to be not a simple enumeration of details, the author of the text needs help to pay attention to significant details and how each of them participates in creating the mood of the work and in creating an aesthetic impression. In addition, the factual part reflecting the well-known information about the creation of the picture will be appropriate in the composition.
The theme of the essay is usually not specified (for example: A. K. Savrasov “The Rooks Have Arrived.” Description of the painting), therefore, schoolchildren are most often not limited either in composition or in emphasis of reasoning.
History of creation
The painting "Rooks Have Arrived" Savrasov first presented to the audience in 1871. It is known that this work was written in the workshop, based on sketches written by him in nature near Kostroma. Initially, there was an opinion that the canvas was painted “in one go”, impressed by what he saw, but the analysis of the sketches, primarily the manners and techniques of writing, suggests the opposite. The painting "Rooks Have Arrived" Savrasov painted gradually, in several stages. The artist carefully worked out the composition and the play of light and color in the workshop.
The work caused such a resonance and was so in demand that A.K. Savrasov more than once created his copies or paintings based on his motives.
To comprehend the canvas, it should be borne in mind that this landscape was painted during one of the most difficult periods of the artist’s life: immediately after the death of a little daughter and during a serious illness of his wife.
Short description
The composition of the painting “Rooks Have Arrived” should start with a brief description of what is depicted on it.
The picture shows an early friendly spring and the beginning of the flood. In the foreground is an image of birches with rooks nests and with birds scurrying around them in different poses. Behind them is a church typical of the Russian landscape, surrounded by a wooden fence. In the background - behind the church - an endless field where water is interspersed with islands of thawed land, then snow. The background for the landscape is the March sky: high and blue, with low heavy clouds.
Center of the picture
It is difficult to say exactly where the compositional and semantic center of the picture is located. In general, the canvas is written so that the gaze wanders from rooks on the tops of birches to the church bell tower, then goes to the background, lingers in the blue sky in the upper left corner and returns to the foreground again to stop in spring water and a rook with a twig in its beak . Such a dynamic perception of the picture is far from accidental. This feature must necessarily reflect the composition. Rooks Have Arrived is one of the first examples of a non-static landscape in Russian painting. The plot itself and the colors are dynamic. The familiar Russian landscape is perceived as the embodiment of movement and life.
Color dynamics
The composition of the painting "Rooks Have Arrived", of course, is impossible without a story about the color perception of the canvas. Describe colors and shades should be against the background of the overall dynamics of the work.
Reflecting the typical and familiar colors of early spring, the artist ensures that each color contrasts with others. Remaining restrained and modest in color, the work is perceived as bright. Blue, white and brown-green fragments are so combined and so contrasted with black spots of rooks and shadows that a feeling of a play of color is created. It also creates a special dynamics of perception, not allowing the viewer to stop contemplating the work. A look wanders between black spots of rooks, blue sky, white snow and green water.
Plot dynamics
As already mentioned above, the amazing dynamics seen and reflected by the author is the reason for the comprehension of this popularity and the unquenchable interest in the audience’s picture, and precisely for what this impression is achieved. The Rooks Have Arrived by A. K. Savrasov is methodologically advantageous to analyze by eliminating the details of the composition. What would the landscape look like if it hadn’t had such a detail?
Rooks
Apparently, you need to start with the birds, focusing on them and trying to understand what place they occupy in the plot. From such an analysis, which each viewer will build in his own way, an interesting story will turn out. Rooks Have Arrived - a name that gives the key to reading the picture. If the birds have recently appeared, then it is easy to imagine the same landscape without them. What did he look like? If you imagine this, the picture loses a huge share of its dynamics, since it is concentrated in birds. Rooks scurry around the nests, fly away from birches somewhere, and then return, one of them - on the ground - is in a hurry to build or repair the nest, picking up a twig and, apparently, about to fly up. It is no coincidence that the beginning of spring is associated with the arrival of these birds, since it is with them that life and movement appear in the surrounding landscape.
Other details
The same technique can be applied to other details of the picture. Water, apparently, literally flooded the earth in just a few days, without it there was recently a snowy plain. More recently, clouds parted, showing the sky, which means adding blue colors and the play of light and shadows in the snow, and clarifying the colors of the church, transforming gray and undefined to green and blue.
In this vein, the composition can be continued further. “Rooks have flown” on many versions of the painting the church invariably contains. Perhaps the worldview of the artist of the XIX century suggested that without it, the Russian landscape was only an endless snowy plain. It is with the advent of the church that life appears on Russian soil.
Footprints in the snow, the direction of the branches of birches, reflections in the water, the movement of clouds - all this can also be included in the description. Rooks Have Arrived is a rich field for observation and interpretation. Being a picture of one instant, this picture surprisingly conveys the onset of spring, the movement of life and - since the church is included in it - the course of human history.
You can finish the work with general conclusions about the impressions of the picture. It will always be beneficial to compare the first sensations from the canvas and thoughts after its details have been analyzed.
Thus, the composition of the film “Rooks Have Arrived” by A. K. Savrasov can be a fascinating lesson and test for observation and ability to analyze your impressions.