The history of creation and description of Vasiliev’s painting “Wet Meadow

The canvas is unusual and touching. This is felt especially clearly if you know what 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 bad cold, and the doctors gave him a terrible diagnosis for those times - "tuberculosis". He urgently needs to go to the Crimea, away from the destructive northern climate. However, the peninsula does not impress the artist, and the Crimean landscapes do not work out well for him. The creator misses the abandoned landscapes too much... And then 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 the depicted is the first point that should affect the description of Vasiliev's painting "Wet Meadow". Grade 8 already requires a great depth of aesthetic taste and artistic flair. So, on the canvas we see a meadow sprinkled with a downpour. 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 is probably over, but the rain has not yet ended.

The canvas will not touch our attention with bright colors or depicted large-scale events. But it is worth taking a closer look - and we will understand that the work is ingenious 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 evident in the sky, which occupies a significant part of the canvas.

The description of Vasiliev’s painting “Wet Meadow” should also touch on its construction. The compositional center of the canvas is focused on two trees, the image drawn to them with invisible threads - a slope, 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 enlarges the space. The latter allowed the artist to accommodate a landscape that is impressive in its inclusiveness: there is also a sprawling meadow here, and simply the infinite must also be taken into account when creating a description of the painting by F. A. Vasilyev “Wet Meadow”.

The celestial surface is divided into two halves, and the border 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 sail on, bringing rain to the distant forest. The two sides of the sky are mirrored in the water - dark and light at the same time. All this holds the picture together, does not allow the image to fall apart into separate, unrelated details. Approximately this conclusion comes if you try to write a description of the painting "Wet Meadow" by Vasiliev.

The basic idea

However, any talented canvas, in addition to the external, pictorial side, also has an internal one. 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 agitated, rebellious, thunderous. This gives the canvas extreme realism; it seems a little more - and you will feel the smell of ozone, a little coolness that always comes after rain, or a touch of drops. With such a thought, it is necessary to complete the description of Vasiliev’s painting “Wet Meadow”.

Other facts

But this is not the end. Contemporaries of the creator highly appreciated this work and even awarded him second place in the exhibition held by the Society for the Encouragement of Artists. By the way, the creation of Shishkin won then, but this is not so important. Much more important is that society saw in Fedor Alexandrovich a rare talent capable of creating true masterpieces (our description of Vasilyev's painting "Wet Meadow" proves such an idea).

For some time the canvas was kept by a close friend. Then Prince Nikolai Konstantinovich wanted to buy 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, after creating his northern masterpiece, he had only a year left. The artist worked on the works for a long time and intensely, completely exhausting himself. Naturally, this did not contribute to recovery, and by the end of September 1873, Vasiliev passed into another world.