Alexey Kondratyevich Savrasov began selling landscape paintings at the age of 12. He was born in Moscow into a merchant family. He studied the genre of landscape painting at the Moscow School from where he graduated in 1850. Later, he became an Academician, and made a name by painting the dacha of Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna. He then became president of the Academy. In 1857, He exceeded his professor Karl Rabus in landscape painting and was later canonized for his 1871 masterpiece, “The Rooks Have Arrived”.
Biography
Alexey Savrasov was born on 12 May 1830 and was the second son of five children in a merchant family in Moscow. In his early youth he displayed immense talent for painting, in spite of the wishes of his father who hoped to attract him into the world of commerce. Savrasov was enrolled in the Moscow School of Painting and Sculpture in 1844. From the years,1800 –1857 he was a student in the perspective and landscape class taught by Karl I Rabus. IV Likhachov, a member of the Council of the Moscow Art Society, supported him as his patron financially. Savrasov was one of several students who travelled in the summer of 1849 to the south of Russia to paint views of Odessa and the Ukraine. For his class works of that year he was awarded a merit certificate and on 25 September 1850, he also received a civil
award for “View of the Moscow Kremlin by Moonlight” and “Stone at a Small Stream”. Savrasov’s first landscapes followed directly in the traditions of the Imperial Academy of Arts. Academic landscape painting in Russia in the forties and fifties used Romanticism as the primary style and Savrasov’s teacher also favoured this style. The artist’s youthful works which included: “View of Moscow from Vorobyovy Hills” (1848) and “View of the Kremlin in Inclement Weather” (1851). The influence of Romanticism is evident in his paintings, although distinguished by real observation and sincerity of feeling.Savrasov gained the attention of the Grand Duchess Maria Nikolayevna, daughter of Emperor Nicholas II, and was commissioned to create landscapes for the Russian Art Academy.
Influences
In 1862, the Art Lovers’ Society paid for Savrasov to visit the World Exhibition in London. Returning to Russia, the artist travelled through France, Switzerland and Germany. Certain paintings of that period show that he was influenced by the style of the popular Swiss artist Alexandre Calame, yet in his letters and official report Savrasov claims that he felt more emotional affinity with British landscape artists. The World Exhibition itself clearly made a strong impression on him. Savrasov’s visits to the British Museum, National Gallery and a watercolour exhibition in London helped him to become acquainted with British art. In his letters and reports he mentions contemporary British landscape artists such as John Linnell and James Harding. Although Constable is mentioned in neither, his work must doubtless have attracted Savrasov’s attention. The Russian artist’s preference for national, recognizable motifs and his ability to portray the poetic charm of nature’s transitional moments suggest that, of all his British colleagues, he had the most in common with Constable. In the British section of the World Exhibition Savrasov would have seen some of Constable’s most famous works.
Savrasov spoke very highly of English art as a whole, yet he was particularly impressed by English landscapists who abandoned convention and went against previously held views while retaining their originality. They strengthened his determination to turn Russian landscape painting into a well-respected branch of art like any other, with its own national character.
In the years which followed the abolition of serfdom, the dismal life of Russian villages naturally became a common subject in Russian painting. The vast majority of the population were peasants. Culture became increasingly democratic as social issues came to the fore and the injustice of society was denounced. The growth of ideas associated with the People’s Will movement could not help but be reflected even in a seemingly rural genre such as the landscape. Critical realism gave art, including landscape painting, a literary subtext. In genre painting, motifs from nature echoing social themes and the poetry of Nekrasov became extremely common, serving to heighten the emotional impact of the work. Many paintings of that period could be called rustic.
Signature Works
Alexey Savrasov’s most well known work is “The Rooks Have Arrived” . In this classic work, Savrasov ‘s mastery is shown in capturing everyday Russian life without diminishing its significance. This is evident as he places the rooks in detail at the forefront with images of a Russian village in the background. In his painting, ‘End of Summer on the Volga River'(1873), Savrasov presents an agricultural scene with threshed piles of grain dotting a farm field. The Volga and an immense sky are off in the distance. The painting offers a sense of space alongside a rural setting that, taken together, provides a coherent image of the Russian landscape, while the Volga serves as the unifying theme in this national narrative. The agricultural idyll that Savrasov depicts would later be celebrated in Socialist Realist art. The
landscape The Volga in Spate by Yaroslavl (1871) expresses the tranquil might of Russian nature, in which rivers flood and turn into seas. In the 1870s, his works began to express more sadness, anxiety and even acute grief due to multiple deaths in the family and trauma which made him turn to alcohol. For example “A Moonlit Night: A Marsh” (1870) and “Sunset Over the Marsh” (1871)
Alexey Savrasov’s most well known work is “The Rooks Have Arrived” . In this classic work, Savrasov ‘s mastery is shown in capturing everyday Russian life without diminishing its significance. This is evident as he places the rooks in detail at the forefront with images of a Russian village in the background. In his painting, ‘End of Summer on the Volga River'(1873), Savrasov presents an agricultural scene with threshed piles of grain dotting a farm field. The Volga and an immense sky are off in the distance. The painting offers a sense of space alongside a rural setting that, taken together, provides a coherent image of the Russian landscape, while the Volga serves as the unifying theme in this national narrative. The agricultural idyll that Savrasov depicts would later be celebrated in Socialist Realist art. The
landscape The Volga in Spate by Yaroslavl (1871) expresses the tranquil might of Russian nature, in which rivers flood and turn into seas. In the 1870s, his works began to express more sadness, anxiety and even acute grief due to multiple deaths in the family and trauma which made him turn to alcohol. For example “A Moonlit Night: A Marsh” (1870) and “Sunset Over the Marsh” (1871)
Themes
As the son of a merchant, Savrasov spent his childhood years in Moscow’s Zamoskvorechye district. By the age of twelve, this self-taught artist was producing romantic views and landscapes and selling them cheaply to street traders. His father was against this, yet with the help of Karl Rabus, teacher of landscape painting at the Moscow School of Painting and Sculpture, and the enlightened Moscow chief of police Luzhin, the talented youth was able to pursue his studies. Impressed by Savrasov’s artistic ability, Rabus and Luzhin succeeded in persuading his father, and in 1844 Savrasov enrolled at the institution where Rabus taught.
At that time, Russian and European landscape artists sought to capture the particular traits of their native countryside, to highlight the link between man and his native land. Without losing their sense of nature as a single and beautiful phenomenon, developed over previous periods, artists strove to explore man’s everyday life and history in its connection to a specific landscape. Moscow proved an ideal location for studying the Russian countryside and tradition. The following year, Savrasov travelled to Ukraine, producing a series of successful landscapes: critics hailed him as the rising star of Russian art. In 1850, for his “View of the Moscow Kremlin by Moonlight”, only the name of which survives, and two landscapes created that summer at Luzhin’s estate Grigorovo near Dmitrov, the board of the Moscow Artistic Society granted Savrasov the title of artist. Whilst showing clearly Savrasov’s great respect for the traditions of precursor artists, these works also possess the direct, poetical quality present in his very earliest landscapes.