24.05.1830 – 09.29.1897

Alexei Kondratievich Savrasov, Russian landscape painter and talented teacher was a man of a grave, even tragic fate. He died in poverty, and not having received widespread recognition of his contemporaries. His work was forgotten, and only a few decades after the death of the artist, he was recognized as the founder of the Russian realistic landscape.

Alexei Savrasov was born in Moscow in a merchant family, however, he did not follow in the footsteps of his father and entered the Moscow School of Painting and Sculpture in the class of landscape painter Karl Ivanovich Rabus. In the autumn of 1854, at the academic art exhibition for the work “View in the vicinity of Oranienbaum” and “Seaside in the vicinity of Oranienbaum”, imbued with a romantic sound, he received the title of academician.

In 1857 Savrasov began teaching at the Moscow School of Painting and Sculpture. Under his leadership, brought up the largest Russian artists – Isaak Levitan, Sergei and Konstantin Korovin, Mikhail Nesterov.

Savrasov was among the artists from which the Association of Traveling Art Exhibitions began. He was a member of the founders’ council and took an active part in organizing the first exhibition, in the exposition of which there was also the famous work “The Rooks Arrived”, which became a textbook. Alexei Savrasov made a huge step in the development of landscape painting, raising interest in his native nature, the artist was able to see and bring to the viewer the beauty of the central strip of Russia, the beauty of the ordinary and inconspicuous, the beauty and lyricism of lonely skewed churches, the beauty of the spring mudslide.

In the collection of the Voronezh Regional Art Museum. I. Kramskoy is one of the later works of Alexei Savrasov “Winter. Frost”. An exquisite coloristic decision especially highlights this work – against the backdrop of a sky covered with winter clouds, reflected in the ice-bound waters, a snow-white strip of snow and frost-clad trees sparkle, in monotonous white space the artist creates a multicolored radiant frosty morning. The conciseness of the composition surprisingly subtly emphasizes the beauty of the usual and ordinary natural phenomenon.

The last years of his life Savrasov spent in deep need and in the autumn of 1897 died in the department for the poor one of the Moscow hospitals. Isaak Levitan responded to the death of the teacher with the words: “One of the deepest Russian landscape painters has not appeared, with Savrasov appeared lyricism in the painting of the landscape and boundless love for his native land. Yes, the late Savrasov created a Russian landscape, and this his undoubted merit will never be forgotten in the field of Russian art. “