“Great Artists” - a collection about outstanding masters of painting. The book series contains more than 50 illustrations, an “exquisitely written” biography of the artist and the history of the creation of the paintings. The album is dedicated to the work of Savrasov.

Alexey Kondratyevich Savrasov (1830-1897) - an outstanding Russian landscape painter, the founder of the symbolist “mood landscape” in Russian painting, an artist with great creative potential and a tragic fate. Early work of Savrasov (“View to the Kremlin from the Crimean Bridge in inclement weather") develops entirely within the framework of romanticism - with its love for stormy meteorological effects, for sharp contrasts of the foreground and background. The most mature work of this period is “View in the vicinity of Oranienbaum,” for which Savrasov received the title of academician. Subsequent searches and intensive field studies lead to calmer, harmoniously clear coloristic and compositional solutions (“Landscape with a river and a fisherman”, “Rural view”). Subtle light-color effects that link together the foreground soil and natural distances (“Losiny Island in Sokolniki”, “Moonlit Night. Swamp”), and the ability to masterfully convey the circulation of moisture in the atmosphere of the landscape (“Volga”) are becoming increasingly important in the image. In 1871, the master created a number of his best works (“Pechersky Monastery near Nizhny Novgorod”, “Flood of the Volga near Yaroslavl”), including the famous painting “The Rooks Have Arrived”, which became the most popular Russian landscape, a kind of pictorial symbol of Russia. Melted snow, spring rooks on birch trees, a gray-blue, faded sky, dark huts and an ancient church against the backdrop of frozen distant meadows - everything fused into an image of amazing poetic charm. The painting is characterized by a truly magical effect of recognition - and not only somewhere near the Volga, where “Rooks” were painted, but in almost every corner of Russia. As I. N. Kramskoy aptly noted in his letter to F. A. Vasiliev, touching on other landscapes at the exhibition: “all these are trees, water and even air, but the soul is only in “Rooks.” The invisibly visible “soul”, the mood gives life to Savrasov’s subsequent works: wonderful Moscow landscapes, organically combining the everyday simplicity of the foreground with the majestic distances (“Sukharev Tower”, “View of the Moscow Kremlin. Spring”), “Country Road”, masterly in conveying moisture and light and shade ”, the sentimental “Grave over the Volga”, the radiant “Rainbow”, the melancholic painting “Winter Landscape. Frost". Savrasov left a memory of himself as a wonderful teacher. Among his students were K. A. Korovin and I. I. Levitan.