Painting: 1872
Canvas, oil.
Size: 70 × 114 cm

Description of the picture " Wet meadow» F. Vasilyeva

Artist: Fedor Aleksandrovich Vasiliev
Title of the painting: “Wet Meadow”
Painting: 1872
Canvas, oil.
Size: 70 × 114 cm

The life of this boy, who lived in the world for 22 years, is amazing and truly phenomenal. But is it worth calling F. Vasiliev a boy, who ran away from a cushy place in the postal service to St. Petersburg, where he began studying at the Drawing School, working as a restorer along the way? To say that he “showed an interest” in drawing since childhood is an understatement. He suddenly appeared on the artistic Olympus of Russia. The eighteen-year-old self-taught man was put on a par with Kramskoy, Shishkin and Repins, called a “miracle boy”, a merry fellow and a mocker, they said that he was born in a shirt. Amazing? What’s even more amazing is that in a couple of years he began to reach the professional level that many took years to achieve. Various mystical rumors began to circulate about his talent, but they were not supported by facts. Among relatives young artist later Shishkin himself appeared, whom his sister married.

If you look at the portraits of the young dandy, no one would say that at night he works in a restoration workshop. Hands covered with lemon gloves, top hat on short hair, constant presence at festivities and exhibitions, witticisms and sonorous infectious laughter attracted all the young ladies social strata. But none of them knew that Vasiliev lived in a wretched room that resembled a cage, and painted landscapes that could warm even the hardest heart, because they were filled with sincere feeling, simplicity and poetry.

In the winter of 1870, the painter fell ill with pneumonia, which later worsened to tuberculosis. The doctors unanimously recommended sea air to Vasiliev, and he went to Yalta. There the canvas “Wet Meadow” appeared, painted from memory. At the competition, the painting won 2nd place, and the artist admitted that the basis was sketches made earlier in different places.

There are no monumental images or saturated colors here - Vasiliev’s concept of painting consists precisely in liberating it from conventions and techniques. All this was embodied in a wet meadow, just washed by rain, small trees on the right side of the picture, a smooth creek, from the banks of which a slope is visible.

It seemed as if time had stopped in the picture, but it was not static. The clouds run away into the distance, and the trees bend from the wind. The water, at first glance, seems smooth, but if you look closely, light ripples run across it. This opposition of elements is not aggressive, but is quite clearly visible in the sky, which becomes an independent character of the canvas.

The storm may have already passed, but the sky already lives its own life. Clouds slowly creep along it, and it seems that thunderclaps can be heard in the distance. If you see this painting in the Tretyakov Gallery, you will certainly see that it lives in its own world. Its blue and white clear clouds seem to be fighting with the ominous clouds in the distance, sending streams of rain to the ground.

A lot can be said about the sky in Vasiliev’s paintings, because most often this is how the artist’s worldview is expressed. The water reflects the clearing of the clouds, which plays with reflections and on the grass, destroying the dark shadows of the thunderstorm.

The sky with thunderclouds resembles the northern sky, it is so low in relation to the earth. The artist writes it from memory - that’s why the harsh dark colors and the cheerfulness of central Russia. Heaven is divided into two parts, two worlds. One of them is light, which is waiting for the sun to come into its own. The second is gloomy, with dominant black clouds. Rich blues intertwine with blacks in such a way that it is quite difficult to understand where one world begins and the other ends.

The “worldly” wet meadow is simple. Its green colors are drawn with soft lines, and the washed color of the emerald grass fascinates with its vitality. There are a lot of details in the picture: snags near the creek, grass, hills, trees covered with haze, a path that is almost invisible. All these little things, incomprehensible at first glance, are intertwined with each other and you can only see if you look at the canvas very carefully.

This painting is stunning in its simplicity, which seems the most beautiful thing you have ever seen. Motives " Wet meadow“are familiar to every person, because in their native area there is a similar corner.

A couple of trees with spreading branches against the backdrop of a lowland, the bluish haze of the forest hidden behind the horizon, evoke a feeling of something close and dear. A slope is depicted along the lowland, and in the center of the picture is a backwater with green-blue water and thin banks of a tobacco-brown hue. This is the entire composition of the canvas. It is simple and relaxed, but the work is called monumental and thought out to the smallest detail. The outlines of a slope, a creek, and paths flow towards the center of the composition. The visual center that immediately attracts attention is two trees in right side. This shift softens the static nature of the picture and makes it look like a slow-motion video frame.

Nevertheless, everyone who saw this landscape will certainly feel how much emotion and effort the artist put into it, looking for the harmony and purity of nature that he remembered in Yalta.

In this picture we can almost hear the sad lyrical motif of approaching death. It seems that the struggle of thunderclouds symbolizes desire young man to live, but the peaceful “lower” world, on the contrary, sends us to a sad calm, or even pacification.

Look at the “Wet Meadow” again - you will see the volume and space of an almost cosmic level, hear the clean and fresh aromas of a world washed by a thunderstorm, and besides, you will deeply breathe in the moisture, life-giving and necessary.

It was not for nothing that critics and Vasiliev’s contemporaries called this picture the “swan song” of the young artist. Even though during his lifetime he spent his royalties on trinkets for his mother and sisters, led a rather idle lifestyle and was favored by the Morning Post and Russian bohemia, we will never know what was going on in his soul.

...Vasiliev, as you know, was awarded the second prize at an exhibition at the Academy of Arts, the first was given to the recognized master Shishkin, but it was the “miracle boy” who was the first artist who showed us the sky.

Essay based on Vasiliev's painting "Wet Meadow"

An essay based on the painting by F. A. Vasiliev “Wet Meadow”.
Vasilyev’s painting Wet Meadow was painted by the artist in 1872, based on his imagination while in Crimea due to illness. Vasiliev did not really like Crimean landscapes and were difficult for the artist. Being impressed by the past, he decided to paint a picture about his native land, which later became a masterpiece of Russian landscape. Vasiliev wanted to express in his painting the motif of nature with a passing thunderstorm, only that there was a torrential rain, the clouds are hastily leaving. The rumble of thunder can still be heard in the distance. The cloudy sky, which occupies more than half of the canvas in the painting Wet Meadow, sets the main mood for the state of nature in the work; the lower part of the painting reflects complete calm. The plot of the painting is simple; the artist spectacularly conveys the space with a forest stretching into the distance. In the center of attention is a shallow pond, in which thunderclouds illuminated by the evening sun are softly reflected. The bushes of wet grass in the foreground are worked out in more detail. Playing on the contrast of the state of nature, Vasiliev simply superbly showed the viewer a painfully familiar native nature during a passing thunderstorm. The painting Wet Meadow was presented by the artist in St. Petersburg at the promotion union competition talented artists, where the work was awarded the second prize. Today the painting Wet Meadow is in Tretyakov Gallery.
In Vasiliev’s painting “Wet Meadow,” the artist showed endless expanses, a meadow covered with water, and a gloomy sky stretched above all this beauty. It is so gray and heavy that it is ready to crush the earth with its weight. To convey the tragedy of the situation, the author used a mixture of white and gray. He also increased the space allocated for the sky, but slightly reduced the meadow. Under this menacing sky lies a green meadow, which is almost completely flooded with water. It exudes coolness and moisture. It seems that if you touch the painting, you will feel this moisture in your palm. The water that has captured the meadow is depicted in dark colors. She's a little off-putting. Just because of the water, the meadow seems lonely and abandoned, like little puppy, who was thrown out into the cold, autumn rain.
In the distance you can see spreading trees, which give the whole picture a tragic quality. They look so lonely and lost that they want to cry.
Vasiliev's painting "Wet Meadow" is a vivid depiction of the unpredictability of nature. This is an extremely realistic canvas that evokes acute feeling pity for all living things - and leads to a state of light, thoughtful sadness.

Description of the painting by F. A. Vasiliev “Wet Meadow”.
The phenomenon of the “artistic origin” of the landscape painter Fyodor Aleksandrovich Vasiliev always surprises everyone who in one way or another comes into contact with his work. Art critic L.I. Iovleva notes that he appeared on the horizon of Russian art in the 1860s at the age of eighteen, almost as a self-taught boy. But somehow unexpectedly, almost suddenly, he became an equal among the leading artists of that time. On “equal terms” he participated in exhibitions with them, on “equal terms” he won competitions and in two or three years he achieved such professional success, which others took years, and sometimes even a lifetime, to conquer.
A cheerful, witty and temperamental young man, Vasiliev was sick with consumption - an incurable disease at that time. He went to Crimea and lived in Yalta for the last two years. On the streets of Yalta, almonds were falling, roses were blooming, the “Judas tree” was dressed in a lush, dense pink outfit, magnolias were blooming, large clusters of wisteria were hanging from flexible lashes-branches. But the artist was possessed by an irresistible craving for his native land, for the discreet charm of Russian nature.
In Yalta, Vasiliev for a long time depicted old, familiar and painfully dear northern motifs to him. Among the album drawings, where he made pencil sketches of the Crimean nature that was new to him, there are landscapes of central Russia sketched from memories.
In Crimea, Vasilyev also painted the painting “Wet Meadow”, one of the masterpieces of Russian landscape painting. There will be no mighty mountains, no cypress trees, no lush southern flowers, no azure sea - just a rain-washed wet meadow under a huge sky, a few trees in the distance and the shadows of wind-driven clouds running across the wet grass.
The storm is leaving, but the sky is still boiling and seething. With menacing haste, shaggy clouds rush and collide, the rumble of thunder can still be heard - everything in the picture is full of movement, everything lives and breathes: trees bending under the gusts of wind, and rippling water, and the sky. Even especially the sky, imbued with a typically Vasilyevsky mood, which is contrasted on the canvas with ominous clouds, still pouring streams of rain onto the forest visible in the distance.
The sky always plays a significant role in Vasiliev’s paintings, and in “Wet Meadow” it is perhaps the main means of expressing the artist’s poetic thought. A sparkling warm opening in the clouds, reflected in the water and supported by reflections on the ground, fights against huge dark and cold clouds and shadows running along the ground.
As if in contrast to the intensity of the sky, the rest of the landscape is extremely simple and its lines are softer and calmer. Each detail of the picture (and there are many of them on this canvas) is a variation of the main theme, but all the details are so dissolved as a whole that you can recognize them only with a very careful examination.
At first glance, “Wet Meadow” attracts the viewer with its simplicity and familiarity of the motif. In the depths of a wide depression rise two spreading trees. Far behind them, in the gray haze of the forest, a strip of sky appears. A steep slope stretches along the lowland, and in front - almost in the center - a swampy backwater with marshy banks glistens.
That, in fact, is all that is depicted on the canvas of Fyodor Vasiliev. But his contemporaries saw him in this picture as more than even a generalized image of the artist’s native northern nature. The painting captivates the viewer with the extraordinary depth of the inspired landscape, the spontaneity of feelings and moods embedded in it. Vasiliev never presents nature as “cold, eternal and indifferent.” He constantly looked for harmony and purity in her. The moods of struggle and resistance expressed in “Wet Meadow” - on the one hand, and on the other - sadness and melancholy captivate and involuntarily force one to return to sad biography its 22-year-old author.
The composition of “Wet Meadow,” as already mentioned, is extremely simple and relaxed, and at the same time it is difficult to imagine a more thoughtful and monumental work. In the picture it is easy to distinguish the compositional center to which the main lines of the landscape converge - the outlines of a hillside, the banks of a creek, paths, the boundaries of light and shadow in a meadow, a strip of forest. The visual center that organizes the whole picture is the dark silhouette of two mighty trees. Vasiliev shifted it to the right of the geometric center, and that is why the picture does not look static.
Space unfolds surprisingly smoothly and boldly in “Wet Meadow,” especially the sky with its boiling and seething, with its play of light and its cosmic infinity. And at the same time, each bush of grass in the foreground reproduces with botanical accuracy the vegetation of central Russia.
"Wet Meadow" was submitted to the competition of the Society for the Encouragement of Artists in St. Petersburg in 1872 and received second prize (the first was awarded to the painting by I. Shishkin " Pinery").
When the head of the Peredvizhniki Kramskoy saw “Wet Meadow” by Fyodor Vasiliev, he was shocked. And the clean spring greenery, and the flying light, and the silent breeze that rippled the water in the overgrown riverbed, and the invisible drops of rain on the wet foliage of the trees - everything spoke of an extraordinary artist and sensitive to “the noise and music of nature.”

An essay based on a painting by F. A. Vasiliev. "Wet Meadow"
Fedor Alexandrovich Vasiliev - famous landscape painter nineteenth century. He worked hard and fruitfully. In 1870 he caught a bad cold. He was diagnosed with tuberculosis. Doctors recommended that he travel to the south. Vasiliev goes to Crimea. But he doesn't really like it there. He misses Russia. Therefore, the artist plans to paint a new picture.
He does not paint the lush nature of southern Russia. In the picture F.A. Vasiliev depicted a meadow after rain. It's called "Wet Meadow". The canvas was painted in one thousand eight hundred and seventy-two. It won second place in a competition organized by the Society for the Encouragement of Artists. The painting was not painted from life. The artist drew it from memory and from several sketches made earlier in different places.
There are no large-scale objects or bright colors in the picture. It depicts a meadow washed by rain, several trees on the right, a creek with marshy banks in the center and a slope on the left. But the picture is not static. Clouds running across the sky, going into the distance, trees bending from the wind, ripples on the water show the continuous movement occurring in nature. This is a struggle between the elements. It is especially visible in the sky, which occupies most of the picture.
The sky is divided into two parts. One is bright, there the sun is already coming into its own, breaking through the clouds still filled with moisture. The other part is dark, almost black. Clouds dominate there, gloomy and thunderous. They carry their waters further to pour out as rain over the forest visible in the distance. The sky is reflected in the water, which is also dark on one side and light on the other.
Darkness follows the clouds. Therefore, the foreground of the picture is already illuminated by the bright rays of the sun. The road and the grass, refreshed by the rain, are clearly visible. And in the depths everything is dark. Sky and earth merge into one impenetrable blackness. But the canvas does not reek of gloom. On the contrary, it amazes with its life-affirming force. The darkness goes away and is replaced by light again.
The work of F. A. Vasiliev was highly appreciated by his contemporaries. I.N. Kramskoy was shocked. He believed that this work was worthy of first prize. But the author of the picture by that time was only twenty-two years old. Unfortunately, the artist was not given the opportunity to live a long, fruitful life. But what he managed to do put him on a par with such masters of painting as I.I. Shishkin, I.E. Repin and many others.

Wet meadow.
At first glance, the painting “Wet Meadow”, with its familiarity and simplicity of motif, attracts any viewer. In the depths of the wide space, two spreading trees rise, and in the distance, from under the departing menacing clouds, appears small strip sky. Ahead, along the niche, stretches a steep slope, covered with soft and wet green grass. In the foreground - almost in the center of the picture - through black thunderclouds, the warm sun is trying to be reflected in a swampy pool.
The storm passes, but the sky continues to seethe and boil. The shaggy gray clouds swirl and collide with mighty force. Somewhere in the distance, thunder can be heard, reflected in endless space. The picture is full of movement, everything around here breathes and lives: trees bending under strong blows of the wind, water covered with ripples, and the sky. The sky, imbued with a typically Vasilyevsky mood, is contrasted with ominous clouds that continue to cast, far from the viewer, a large stream of rain onto the forest visible from afar.
The sky, in the paintings of Fyodor Vasiliev, invariably plays significant role, and in “Wet Meadow” it is perhaps the key means, it expresses the artist’s poetic thought. A warm sparkling opening high in the clouds above a green meadow, reflected in the water and shining on the grass, wages war with large and cold black clouds, casting a dark shadow on the wet ground.
As if in contrast to the tense existence of the sky, the rest of the picture is quite simple. The lines of her drawing are calmer and softer. Every detail of the landscape is a variation of the main idea, where all the details are so dissolved as a whole that you recognize them only upon careful examination.

The phenomenon of “artistic origin” of the landscape painter Fyodor Aleksandrovich Vasiliev has always continued and continues to amaze everyone who in one way or another comes into contact with his work. Art critic L.I. Iovleva notes that he appeared on the horizon of Russian art of the 1860s at the age of eighteen, almost as a self-taught boy. But somehow unexpectedly, almost suddenly, he became an equal among the leading artists of that time. On “equal terms” he participated with them in exhibitions, on “equal terms” he won competitions and in two or three years achieved such professional successes that others took years, and sometimes a whole life, to achieve.

Fedor Vasiliev. Wet meadow

The cheerful, witty, temperamental young man F. Vasiliev, as he appears from the pages of the memoirs of I. E. Repin and I. Kramskoy, was sick with an incurable disease at that time - consumption. He went to Crimea and lived in Yalta for the last two years.

On the streets of Yalta, almonds were falling, roses were blooming, the “Judas tree” was dressed in a lush, dense pink outfit, magnolias were blooming, large clusters of wisteria were hanging from flexible lashes-branches. But the artist was possessed by an irresistible craving for his native land, for the discreet charm of Russian nature.

In Yalta, F. Vasiliev spent a long time depicting old, familiar and painfully dear northern motifs to his heart. Among the album drawings, where he made pencil sketches of the Crimean nature that was new to him, there are landscapes of central Russia sketched from his memories.

In Crimea, F. Vasiliev also painted the painting “Wet Meadow”, which became one of the masterpieces of Russian landscape painting. In it he wanted to express his feelings, all his love - everything that preserves the memory of his heart. There will be no mighty mountains, no cypress trees, no lush southern flowers, no azure sea - just a rain-washed wet meadow under a huge sky, a few trees in the distance and the shadows of wind-driven clouds running across the wet grass.

The storm is leaving, but the sky is still boiling and seething. With menacing haste, shaggy clouds rush and collide, peals of thunder can still be heard - everything in the picture is full of movement, everything lives and breathes: trees bending under the gusts of wind, and rippling water, and the sky... Even especially the sky, imbued with a typically Vasilyevsky mood , which is contrasted on the canvas with ominous clouds still pouring streams of rain onto the forest visible in the distance.

The sky always plays a significant role in F. Vasiliev’s paintings, and in “Wet Meadow” it is perhaps the main means of expressing the artist’s poetic thought. A sparkling warm opening in the clouds, reflected in the water and supported by reflections on the ground, fights against huge dark and cold clouds and shadows running along the ground.

As if in contrast to the intense life of the sky, the rest of the landscape is extremely simple and its drawing lines are softer and calmer. Each detail of the picture (and there are many of them on this canvas) is a variation of the main theme, but all the details are so dissolved as a whole that you can recognize them only with a very careful examination.

At first glance, “Wet Meadow” attracts the viewer with its simplicity and familiarity of the motif. In the depths of a wide depression, two spreading trees rise. Far behind them, in the gray haze of the forest, a strip of sky appears. A steep slope stretches along the lowland, and in front - almost in the center - a swampy backwater with marshy banks glistens. That, in fact, is all that is depicted on the canvas by F. Vasiliev. But his contemporaries saw him in this picture as more than even a generalized image of the artist’s native northern nature.

The painting captivates the viewer with the extraordinary depth of the inspired landscape, the spontaneity of feelings and moods embedded in it. F. Vasiliev never presents nature as “cold, eternal and indifferent.” He constantly looked for harmony and purity in it, the artist warmed and spiritualized it with a deeply poetic feeling, and it was in his paintings that the intimately lyrical, sad and melancholy theme that froze with his death was first heard. The moods of struggle and resistance expressed in “Wet Meadow” - on the one hand, and on the other - sadness and melancholy captivate and involuntarily force one to return to the sad biography of its 22-year-old author.

The composition of "Wet Meadow" is simple and relaxed, and at the same time it is difficult to imagine a more thoughtful and monumental work. In the picture it is easy to distinguish the compositional center to which the main lines of the landscape converge - the outlines of a hillside, the banks of a creek, paths, the boundaries of light and shadow in a meadow, a strip of forest. The visual center that organizes the whole picture is the dark silhouette of two mighty trees. F. Vasiliev shifted it to the right of the geometric center, and that is why the picture does not look static.

The space in “Wet Meadow” unfolds surprisingly smoothly and boldly. The sky with its boiling and seething, with its play of light and its cosmic infinity is depicted by an unsurpassed master and poet of the sky, as the artist F. Vasiliev was considered. And at the same time, each bush of grass in the foreground reproduces with botanical accuracy the vegetation of central Russia.

“Wet Meadow” was submitted to the competition of the Society for the Encouragement of Artists in St. Petersburg in 1872 and received second prize (the first was awarded to I. Shishkin’s painting “Pine Forest”). Both artists had much in common in their attitude to nature and art. Both of them were children of the land they sang; both were closely connected with her, knew her with all her secrets and therefore knew how to see and so reverently convey her beauty.

When the head of the Itinerants, I. Kramskoy, saw F. Vasiliev’s “Wet Meadow,” he was shocked. And the clean spring greenery, and the flying light, and the silent breeze that rippled the water in the overgrown riverbed, and the invisible drops of rain on the wet foliage of the trees - everything spoke of an extraordinary artist and sensitive to “the noise and music of nature.”

“One Hundred Great Paintings” by N. A. Ionin, Veche Publishing House, 2002

Fedor Alexandrovich Vasiliev (10 (22) February 1850, Gatchina, Russian empire- September 24, 1873, Yalta) - Russian landscape painter.

"Wet Meadow"
Fedor Vasiliev

The painting “Wet Meadow” was painted in Crimea, where the artist Fyodor Vasiliev went to improve his health. After being painted in 1872, the painting was presented at the exhibition of the Society for the Encouragement of Artists, where it received second prize, losing to Shishkin’s painting “Pine Forest. Mast forest in the Vyatka province." Even before the exhibition, Pavel Tretyakov bought the landscape for his collection. Currently, the painting is in the State Tretyakov Gallery.

Description of the painting by Fyodor Vasiliev “Wet Meadow”

The painting “Wet Meadow” became a kind of banner of Russian realistic landscape of the second half of the 19th century century. Unlike other works of the artist, it was almost entirely “composed”, that is, composed of different sources, directly written in the form of sketches and sketches. These sketches were sketched in the Kharkov province, where Vasiliev spent the autumn of 1871. He sketched his favorite views with great enthusiasm. Later, having left for Crimea, the artist was very homesick, not perceiving the beauty of the south. This melancholy was the impetus for the creation of “Wet Meadow”. The painting was based on sketches made in Ukraine, and memories of Central Russian nature were added to them. The end result was amazing. “Wet Meadow” was a kind of lyrical recollection of the young artist about his homeland.

The canvas reproduces a realistic landscape that is painfully dear to the heart of the Russian people. The picture itself is painted very sparingly. This applies to the “nondescript” plot, compositional rigor, and coloristic restraint. The color scheme is almost monochrome - mainly green and blue colors with their many shades. But what a tonal diversity this resulted in. Despite the technical stinginess, the painter managed to awaken in the viewer a whole storm of feelings - from quiet sadness to solemn delight.

When you carefully examine the picture, it seems that the clouds are really floating somewhere before your eyes and that the grass is sparkling with real raindrops that have settled on it. The fantastic light, which Vasiliev mastered brilliantly and which delighted Kramskoy, divides the picture into two parts - on one side, nature renewed after a thunderstorm, and on the other, the raging elements. And all this, thanks to the artist’s skill, comes to life before your eyes.

Fyodor Vasiliev “Wet Meadow” (1872)
Canvas, oil. 70 x 114 cm
State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia

In July 1871, Fyodor Vasiliev left for Crimea, hoping to improve his health. There, not from life, but based on his sketches and impressions, he painted the painting “Wet Meadow,” which was completed in 1872. Also in 1872, the painting participated in a competitive exhibition of the Society for the Encouragement of Artists and received an honorary second prize among landscape works there.

Kramskoy writes about the finality inherent in painting, about the fantastic and at the same time natural light, from which you cannot take your eyes off, and about the truthfulness of the state of nature conveyed by Vasilyev, which manifested itself so differently in the trees still wet from the rain, in the breeze blowing on the water, in the fleeing shadows from the clouds and in the bright spring greenery of the rain-washed grass depicted in the foreground. “...You have risen to an almost impossible fortune-telling height... I saw how to paint... Do you notice that I don’t say a word about your colors. This is because they are not in the picture at all... In front of me is a majestic view of nature, I see forests, trees, clouds, I see stones, and poetry of light walks across them, a kind of solemn silence, something deeply thoughtful, mysterious. .."

The canvas is unusual and touching. This is felt especially clearly if you know that it was created by a young artist who had very little time left to live... So, we begin the description of Vasiliev’s painting “Wet Meadow”.

History of creation

It all started with an illness. In 1870, the artist caught a severe cold, and doctors gave him a terrible diagnosis for those times - tuberculosis. He urgently needs to go to Crimea, away from the destructive northern climate. However, the peninsula does not impress the artist, and he is not good at Crimean landscapes. The creator misses the landscapes he left behind too much... And so the idea comes to his mind to capture them literally from memory. Based on several sketches, he creates a full-fledged masterpiece.

Plot and composition

A detailed analysis of what is depicted is the first point that should be addressed in the description of Vasiliev’s painting “Wet Meadow”. 8th grade already requires a lot of depth aesthetic taste and artistic flair. So, on the canvas we see a meadow sprinkled with rain. Above the sparse northern vegetation - a few trees located in the background - there is a stormy, one might even say “boiling” sky. The peak of the storm appears to be behind us, but the rain has not stopped yet.

The canvas will not affect our attention bright colors or depicting large-scale events. But if we take a closer look, we will understand that the work is brilliant in its detail, its special dynamics. This should also take into account the description of the painting “Wet Meadow” by Vasiliev. In fact, everything depicted is a continuous struggle of the elements. This is especially visible in the sky, which occupies a significant part of the canvas.

The description of Vasiliev’s painting “Wet Meadow” should also touch upon its construction. The compositional center of the canvas is concentrated on two trees, the image depicted stretches towards them with invisible threads - slopes, golden dots. The shift to the right of the center of the canvas is not accidental: it gives naturalness to the canvas, and also visually increases the space. The latter allowed the artist to include a landscape that is impressive in its comprehensiveness: there is also a spreading meadow, and simply the infinite must also be taken into account when creating a description of F. A. Vasiliev’s painting “Wet Meadow”.

The celestial surface is divided into two halves, and the boundary separating them is visible quite clearly. The first is already in the power of the sun, and the second - dark, almost black - still contains clouds. Soon they will float on, bringing rain to the forest visible in the distance. The two sides of the sky are mirrored in the water - both dark and light. All this holds the picture together and prevents what is depicted from falling apart into separate, unrelated parts. You will come to approximately the same conclusion if you try to write a description of the painting “Wet Meadow” by Vasiliev.

Main thought

However, any talented painting, in addition to its external, pictorial side, also has an internal side. In other words, the question always remains: what did the creator want to tell the public? In this case, the artist’s landscape conveys the unpredictability of nature, the struggle in it of two elements, two principles - light and dark, calm, serene and worrying, rebellious, stormy. This gives the canvas extreme realism; It seems that a little more - and you will feel the smell of ozone, a slight coolness that always comes after rain, or the touch of drops. It is necessary to finish the description of Vasiliev’s painting “Wet Meadow” with such a thought.

Other facts

But this is not the end. The creator's contemporaries highly appreciated this work and even awarded it second place at an exhibition held by the Society for the Encouragement of Artists. By the way, Shishkin’s creation won then, but this is not so important. What is more important is that society saw in Fyodor Alexandrovich a rare talent capable of creating true masterpieces (our description of Vasiliev’s painting “Wet Meadow” proves this idea).

For some time, the canvas was kept by a close friend. Then Prince Nikolai Konstantinovich wanted to purchase the painting, but he was ahead of him. It is there, in the Tretyakov Gallery, that the painting is located to this day. As for Fyodor Vasiliev, he had only a year left after creating his northern masterpiece. The artist worked long and hard on his works, completely exhausting himself. Naturally, this did not contribute to recovery, and by the end of September 1873 Vasiliev passed away.