Fyodor Vasiliev, lived too long short life, only 22 years old. But, to an ordinary person It would not have been possible in a whole century to do what this boy did in such a short period on earth. Phenomenal talent, unusual abilities and love of work are the qualities that helped to the young master gain popularity.
Biographical touches
After Vasiliev escaped from the postal service, he went to St. Petersburg, where the doors of the Drawing School opened for him. In addition to studying, the young artist was also involved in restoration, earning a living. The master was interested in drawing since early childhood, and it was not just a hobby, it was a special gift, talent. Vasiliev, at eighteen years old, having not studied anywhere before, could compete with famous artists of that time such as Repin, Shishkin, Kramskoy.
What names were not invented for the young boy - mocker, merry fellow, “miracle boy”. Thanks to his cheerful character, Vasiliev was a favorite of the public. Over the course of several years of training, the artist’s skill reached a highly professional level, which others achieved only after many years of continuous work. His unique talent was a source of rumors, there was even talk of interference mystical powers, but these were just guesses and assumptions of envious people.
Later, Vasiliev’s sister married the then already famous Shishkin, which connected young artist with an already established master through family ties. At night, Fedor still worked as a restorer. He was popular among ladies of high society, as he always knew how to look good. His charming ringing laugh, lemon gloves on his hands, a top hat on his head, as well as his active participation in all important events could not help but charm young ladies thirsty for love and passion.
His personal life was hidden from anyone, the artist lived in a small, cage-like room and painted wonderful, warming landscapes into which he poured his whole soul. The young artist’s paintings are notable for the fact that they emanate sincere feelings, simplicity and poetry.
Later, the painter was struck by pneumonia, the consequence of which was the development of tuberculosis, which forced Vasiliev to go to Yalta, where there was a lot of sun, sand and fresh sea air. It was here that the painting was born. Wet meadow».
“Wet Meadow” as the embodiment of the master’s painting concept
According to the young artist, the canvas appeared as a result of sketches developed in different time and in different places.
Vasiliev frees his works from traditional canonical techniques. They are not distinguished by the brightness of colors and monumental images. The painting “Wet Meadow” embodies all the artist’s pictorial views and his well-established concept. The subject basis of the canvas is a wet meadow washed by rain. The beauty of nature is in the variety of its shades, which includes trees, slopes, banks, and ponds. It’s as if a moment of calm and tenderness in the lap of nature has been snatched from the whirlwind of life.
But it’s also difficult to call the picture static, because if you look closely, you can see how the wind bends the trees, and the smooth water ripples a little. The sky acts as an independent character in the canvas, in which a clear opposition can be traced. Although the storm has passed, the skies indicate recent rain, and somewhere in the distance you can still hear the rumble of thunder. Light clouds slowly float over the ground, and in the background the trail of thunderclouds has not yet cooled down. Vasiliev quite often refers to the image of the sky in his work. This element in different canvases is endowed with its own characteristics, its own character, it seems to express the worldview of the master.
The skies in the painting “Wet Meadow” evoke an impression of uncertainty. On one side they are painted with light blue paints; Sun rays and the whole meadow is filled with light. On the other hand, the second half of the canvas is empty against the background of the gloomy tones of black clouds.
To embody a wet meadow, the author uses soft lines of green shades. The whole of it is covered with emerald-colored grass, alive and filled with strength after the rain. The whole picture is saturated small details, which give it integrity and completeness. Here you can see a barely noticeable path, hills, snags. A superficial glance will not be able to grasp the fullness of the canvas. The motif of the painting is simple and unique. Every person somewhere in their memory will find a similar story from life.
Plot features of the canvas
The canvas is successfully complemented by overgrown branchy trees against the backdrop of a lowland, hidden behind the horizon by the bluish haze of the forest. In the center of the work is a backwater. Its dark blue waters and tobacco-brown shores attract the eye. The composition of the painting, despite its simplicity and ease, is endowed with monumental accents. All the details in it, as well as their combination, are thought out to the smallest detail. Such organization and completeness gives the feeling that this is a separate frame of video filming.
A person looking at the picture cannot help but appreciate the artist’s power and emotional investments that led to the harmony of the canvas. The plot can be interpreted in different ways. Someone will see here the confrontation between good and evil, light and darkness, someone will be fascinated by the allegory of the struggle between life and death, younger generation with going into oblivion. The painting excites sensitivity, because when viewing Vasiliev’s work, you can enjoy the freshness of the air after rain, the sight of passing thunderclouds, and inhale the aromas of freshly washed herbs and trees.
The painting is highly valued not only by contemporary art critics. They also paid tribute to her for the artist’s life, calling the canvas “Wet Meadow” a “swan song.” His personal life is shrouded in mystery and secrets. We will never unravel the psychology of the master. His life was not distinguished by luxury; Vasiliev earned his fees through honest labor and unsurpassed talent, which was always the subject of rumors and discussions. Truly valuable, his works are at the pinnacle of pictorial art, they inspire and calm the spiritual impulses of connoisseurs.
Canvas, oil. 70x114 cm.
State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.
“In this case, I want to depict the morning over a swampy place,” he writes to Kramskoy on December 27, 1871. “(However, do not think that this is a real swamp - no, the real one is ahead, and these are just preparations). Oh swamp, swamp ! artist, I’ll lose more than half!”
It was completed on time, and on February 20, Kramskoy found himself in the hands of one of his best works, sent by Vasiliev, outwardly no longer similar to previous works artist and now known as “Wet Meadow” (1872).
One of the features " Wet meadow", characteristic of most of Vasiliev’s other works, is the integrity of the image and at the same time a careful and detailed development of details. Under the artist’s brush, every blade of grass, a stone with the glare of the sun, a dry branch - everything seems equally precious, everything seems to have the reflection of an attentive and the artist's loving gaze. For Vasiliev, in the words of Nekrasov, “there is no ugliness in nature” - you just need to be able to see.
"Wet Meadow" earned the warm praise of Kramskoy, whose letters were for Vasiliev almost the only, but fruitful connection with Russian artistic life. Vasiliev valued Kramskoy’s advice very much and shared his plans and doubts with him. He 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.
Appearing in the early seventies, during the period of formation of a new type of landscape, Vasiliev’s painting was a rare and significant phenomenon for its time, revealing new way for Russian landscape painting: “There are always few passengers on a new road, even if it is the shortest,” Kramskoy wrote to Vasiliev during the appearance of “Wet Meadow” at the competition, “and it will take a lot of time until everyone is convinced that this particular road has long been necessary.” .
Painted not from life, but composed by the artist on the basis of sketches made in different places and at different times, it amazed contemporaries with the freshness of the painting, the accuracy of recreating the atmosphere and, most of all, the feeling of vague languor emanating from it. The film received an award from the Society for the Encouragement of the Arts.
Vasiliev F. “Wet Meadow”: History of the painting
Vasiliev F. “Wet Meadow”:
History of the painting
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 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, temperamental young man F. Vasiliev, as he appears from the pages of I.E.’s memoirs. 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 heartbreakingly dear northern motifs. 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 into the 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 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 searched 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 sad biography 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 the painting by I. Shishkin " Pinery"). In relation to nature and art, both artists had much in common. Both of them were children of the land that they sang; both were closely connected with it, knew it with all its secrets and therefore knew how to see and so reverently convey its 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
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 into the 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 drafts. 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 also 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. .."
