Despite the lingering snow on the ground, spring is certainly not far. Chirping in the trees as they build their nests, the rooks are like nature's time clock for this village. Their arrival, watched for by the people of this village every year, signals a coming change in the weather. This beautiful composition is an interpretation of the famous oil on canvas painting "The Rooks Have Come". It was painted in 1871 by Aleksey Savrasov, and it currently is on display in the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow.
Aleksey Savrasov (1830-1897) graduated from the Moscow School of Painting and Sculpture in 1850, where he also began teaching in 1857. Some of his more famous students were Isaac Levitan and Konstantin Korovin. Already an established artist, Savrasov traveled from Russia to England and Switzerland in the 1860s. His introduction to English landscape painting proved very enlightening, and he produced such paintings as "View of the Swiss Alps from Interlaken" (1862), Rustic View" (1867), and "Rafts" (1868).
"The Rooks Have Come" is considered by many critics to be the pinnacle of Savrasov's artistic career. By combining a common and even trivial theme with a very simple landscape, Savrasov managed to show very emotionally the transition of nature from winter to spring. It was a new type of lyrical landscape painting, called later by art critics "the mood landscape". It was this painting that gave Savrasov real fame, and in some circles it was his only known work.
This miniature interpretation is done on the cover of a notebook by a married pair of Fedoskino artists, the Tatarkins. They have used several materials to compliment the oil paints in the composition. Aluminum powder, reminiscent of miniatures from the Vishnyakov era, has been used as the base for the snow and the sky. Light blue oil paints mixed with crushed mother-of-pearl are used to depict the portions of the sky that are not obstructed by the afternoon clouds. The Tatarkins have then used strong earth tones for the countryside and the trees, adhering to the original's detail and realism. The cathedral is painted in softened tones of pink for the brick and green for the tile roofs.
The bark of the Russian birch trees is clearly visible below the nesting rooks, and the branches at the tops of the trees are painted with thin lines. One of the rooks is on the ground with a broken branch in its beak, destined to be the foundation of a future nest. The composition fills the entire surface of this gorgeous notebook and has no border.
This telephone booklet is divided into alphabetical sections (according to the Russian alphabet), and has a section in the front and the back for not taking. An ideal place to keep your daily affairs, scribble telephone numbers, take notes, and it's small enough to carry around anywhere you go. This is a beautiful piece featuring a famous composition!
Materials: paper-mache, black lacquer, oil paints, mother-of-pearl.
Item Specifications:
- Title: "The Rooks Have Come 2001"
- Price: $90.00
- Status: SOLD
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