Background

Aleksey Savrasov was born on May 24, 1830 in Moscow, Russian Empire (now Russian Federation) into the family of a merchant. His father was Kondraty Artemyevich Savrasov, who sometimes wrote his surname through "o".

The artist had three sisters and a younger brother, Nikolai Kondratievich Sovrasov (1837-1909, wrote his surname, like his father, through "o"), a merchant, who inherited his father’s business.

Aleksey Savrasov began to draw early. When he was only 12, he started painting gouache and watercolor landscapes that were gladly bought up by street vendors for chicken feed.

Education

Aleksey Savrasov enrolled at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture (MSPSA) in 1844, though his father was against it. Despite his apparent talent, he was regularly sent to the attic to work - so strong wфы his father’s protest against his son’s hobby. So only several weeks after the enrollment Savrasov, being afraid of his father and worried by his mother’s illness, quit his studies only to resume them four years later thanks to his professors and philanthropists who noticed the talented boy and decided to help him.

In 1848 Savrasov studied under the renowned landscape painter and professor Karl Rabus and was considered the best student in landscape painting at the school.

A year later, in 1849, Savrasov was sent to Odessa in Ukraine where he painted landscapes of the local nature. These works were distinguished and the young artist received an appreciation certificate.

Savrasov graduated in 1854, received the official title of unclassed artist and immediately began to specialize in landscape painting.

Career

Aleksey Savrasov's early works, painted after his graduation, showed Romantic tendencies. One of those paintings was "View in the Neighbourhood of Oranienbaum" (1854).

By the invitation of the Grand Duchess Maria Nikolayevna, the President of the Russian Academy of Arts, who commissioned several works from Savrasov, in summer 1854 he moved to the shores of the Gulf of Finland in the neighborhood of St. Petersburg. Though the scenery there was alien to his spirit, he was able to find some innovations never before seen in academic landscape painting. Several months later two of the pictures painted at the gulf coast attracted mass attention during an exhibition at the Academy. Those two were “View in the Neighborhood of Oranienbaum” and “Seashore in the Neighborhood of Oranienbaum”. The paintings earned Savrasov the title of a Fellow of the Academy.

After the promising exhibition in Saint Petersburg, in 1855 Savrasov moved back to Moscow where he took part in exhibitions held by the School of Painting and Sculpture.

In 1857, Savrasov became a teacher at the MSPSA. His best students, Isaac Levitan and Konstantin Korovin, remembered their teacher with admiration and gratitude.

In the sixties Savrasov became especially close with Vasily Perov, a Russian painter and one of the founding members of the Peredvizhniki. Perov helped him paint the figures of the boat trackers in Savrasov’s "Volga near Yuryevets" while Savrasov painted landscape paintings for Perov’s "Bird Catcher and Hunters on Bivouac".

In 1862, at the suggestion of the Art Amateurs’ Society, Savrasov went abroad. He traveled to England, Switzerland, Copenhagen, Berlin, Dresden, Leipzig and Paris and visited Munich to see the International Exhibition being held there.

The artists whose works influenced him most at that time were British painter John Constable and Swiss painter Alexandre Calame. Besides, Savrasov’s introduction to English landscape painting was most influential. His best paintings of the period included “View of the Swiss Alps from Interlaken” (1862), “Rustic View” (1867) and “Rafts” (1868).

In the sixties the most significant work by Savrasov was considered “Elk Island” (1869).

In 1869 Savrasov helped publish a textbook on drawing. The artist made sure it included a detailed description of how to paint cottages, villages and typical Russian landscape.

In December 1970 Savrasov and his wife went to Yaroslavl (and later moved to Nizhny Novgorod), not far from the Volga River. The artist was charmed by the magnificence of the nature and spent much time working. He always enjoyed working outside, often in the suburbs of Moscow; but from 1870 Savrasov started making frequent trips to the upcountry.

In the late 1870s and early 1880s Savrasov produced many good landscape paintings. "The Rooks Have Come Back" (1871) is considered by many critics to be the high point in Savrasov’s artistic career. Using a common, even trivial, episode of birds returning home, and an extremely simple landscape, Savrasov emotionally showed the transition of nature from winter to spring. It was a new type of lyrical landscape painting, called later by critics the mood landscape. The painting brought him fame and contributed to the success of the first exhibition organized by the Peredvizhniki. After the overwhelming success, Savrasov continued to work side by side with the Peredvizhniki group and helped mount exhibitions, often hanging his own works.

In the late seventies, Savrasov’s art experienced a certain decline: his works were hung more and more rarely and his eyesight started to fail. Savrasov, unable to withstand such hardships, became an alcoholic. In addition, in 1882, he was dismissed from his position at the MSPSA.

His work suffered dramatically and the last years of his life were spent in poverty. Thievish picture dealers took advantage of the great artist's tight situation and bought up his works for next to nothing, selling them, in turn, for a much larger sum - the sum they were really worth. The artist was systematically excluded from all the artistic circles and communities that once used to boast being acquainted with Savrasov. Despite his poor eyesight, which worsened with time, Savrasov continued to paint, although the quality of his work had declined.

Besides, he was usually drunk and often dressed in rags. Finally, he found himself wandering from shelter to shelter. Only the doorkeeper of the MSPSA and Savrasov's patron Pavel Tretyakov, founder of the Tretyakov Gallery, were present at his funeral in 1897.

Achievements

• Aleksey Savrasov was one of Russia’s most remarkable landscape painters and the originator of the so-called "mood landscape". One of these paintings "View in the Neighbourhood of Oranienbaum" (1854) earned him the title of Academic of the Russian Academy of Art.
  
  His painting "Elk Island" (1869) earned the artist the first prize at the contest organized by the Moscow Art Amateurs’ Society.
  
  Moreover, "The Rooks Have Come Back" (1871) is considered by many critics to be the high point in Savrasov’s artistic career.

Works

More photos

• painting

  • Early Spring

  • Rye

  • Sketch of the painting migratory birds have come

  • Cathedral Square in the Moscow Kremlin at night

  • Dimensions and material of painting

  • Volga

  • Old pine

  • Spring

  • Grave

  • Winter road

  • Country road

  • Trees by the River

  • Type in a village near Moscow Kuntsevo

  • Feminine strap

  • View of the Moscow Kremlin

  • Sea

  • Lell

  • Little House in the province. Spring

  • Winter landscape. Rime

  • Pines, adjacent to the root of the barrel

  • Summer Day

  • The road in the woods

  • Pine in marsh

  • Winter Night

  • After a Thunderstorm

  • Trees

  • View of Moscow from Sparrow Hills

  • Thaw. Beginning of March

  • Spring, Village View

  • Sunset

  • Sparrow Hills near Moscow

  • Trees near the water. Branches of trees

  • Spring is coming

  • Autumn. Sokolniki

  • Riverside

  • Moonlit night. Landscape with fire

  • Type in the Swiss Alps (Mount Small Ruhen)

  • Elk Island in Sokolniki

  • Evening

  • Volga. Landscape

  • Forest road in Sokolniki

  • Autumn

  • By evening

  • Early spring. Dali

  • Ipatiev monastery in the winter night

  • At the well

  • Lake in the Swiss mountains

  • Landscape. Bank of the Volga

  • Landscape with oak trees and shepherd

  • Ukrainian landscape

  • Autumn forest. Kuntsevo (Damn place)

  • Pond at dusk

  • Early spring. Backwoods

  • In the park

  • Tomb on the banks of the Volga

  • Spring Day

  • View of Pechersk Lavra in Kiev from the Dnieper

  • Spring

  • Type in the outskirts of Moscow to the manor and two female figures

  • Trees near the lake

  • Early Spring. Thaw

  • Sunset

  • Winter Landscape

  • Marshy river

  • Thaw

  • Courtyard. Winter.

  • Landscape with Church and the ruins

  • Spring

  • Early spring

  • Waterfall

  • Oak

  • View of Volga near Yurievts

  • Breath of spring

  • Autumn Landscape

  • Riverbank of Velunia

  • The Volga River. Vistas

  • Landscape with a River and an Angler

  • Landscape with boat

  • Barge Haulers on the Volga

  • Swiss landscape with horses

  • At the cemetery

  • Night

  • The Rooks Have Come Back

  • Spring. The Rooks Have Arrived.

  • Oaks

  • Church of Elijah the ordinary in Moscow

  • Spruce

  • The death of the ship at sea

  • Forest near the lake, illuminated by the sun

  • Mountain Lake. Switzerland

  • Near icon

  • Flooding of the Volga river near Yaroslavl

  • Tomb on the banks of the Volga

  • Wooded banks of the Moskva River

  • View in the Neighbourhood of Oranienbaum

  • Landscape with pine

  • Village Bulgarians

  • Glade in a pine forest

  • Landscape with hut

  • Forest

  • Gulf of Finland

  • Tropical plants

  • Evening Landscape

  • Kutuzovskaya hut at Fili

  • On the Volga

  • Early Spring

  • Autumn night

  • Pine

  • Steppe day

  • Landscape with marsh and wooded islands

  • Thunderstorm

  • Landscape. The village of Volyn

  • Summer landscape. Pines

  • Oaks on the shore

  • A spring day

  • Summer Landscape

  • Beach

  • Fishermen on the Volga

  • Courtyard. Spring.

  • Drifting of ice

  • Moonlit Night

  • Landscape with Church

  • Forest in the frost

  • Spring

  • A Provincial Cottage. Spring

  • Bivouac in the desert convoy Chumakov

  • Descent to the river

  • Stone in the forest near the spill

  • Caves Monastery near Nizhny Novgorod

  • View of Moscow from Mazilova

  • Summer landscape with oaks

  • Spring

  • Oaks

  • Before the Storm

  • Willow by the pond

  • Alley

  • Early Spring

  • Early Spring

  • Early Spring. Flood

  • Chumaky

  • Sundown over a marsh

  • Fire in woods

  • Moonlit night. Marsh

  • Autumn. Village near the stream

  • Volga

  • Fern leaves and burdock

  • Rural cemetery in the moonlight

  • Volga near Gorodets

  • Landscape with a Mill

  • Pine from Gusareva

  • Ukrainian landscape

  • The Rooks Have Arrived

  • View of the Kremlin from the Krimsky Bridge in Inclement Weather

  • Compressed field

  • Bivouac in the desert convoy Chumakov

  • Evening Migration of birds

  • Summer Landscape

  • Monastery Gates

  • Dawn in the desert

  • The old churchyard on the banks of the Volga

  • After the storm

  • Clearance

  • Summer landscape with windmills

  • Winter landscape. Moscow

  • Sunset

  • Sea shore in the vicinity Oranienbaum

  • Evening

  • Rafts

  • Night on the Sparrow Hills

  • Motives of the Russian landscape

  • Summer Day

  • Village Bulgarians. Small minaret and the ruins of the White House

  • Country Scene

  • Novodevichy Convent

  • On the Volga

  • Twilight

  • By late summer, on the Volga

  • Volga

  • Winter

  • Summer landscape with pine trees near the river

  • Landscape with a farm near Lake

  • Grave

  • Landscape with hut

  • Landscape with a Rainbow

  • Moonlit Night on the River

  • Pines on the shores of Lake

  • Landscape with road

  • Stumps

  • Rainbow

  • Round dance in the village

  • Thaw. Yaroslavl.

  • Autumn Landscape with a swampy river in the moonlight

  • Tomb of Alexander Pushkin in Svyatogorsky monastery

  • Winter

  • Old oak tree at the cliff above the river

  • Elk Island in Sokolniki

  • The Monastery of the Caves Near Nizhny Novgorod

  • Rye

  • Swiss form

  • Evening

Membership

In 1870, Alexei Savrasov became a member of the Peredvizhniki group, a group of Russian realist artists who, in protest of academic restrictions, formed an artists' cooperative, which evolved into the Society for Traveling Art Exhibitions in 1870, breaking with government-sponsored academic art.

• The Peredvizhniki group , Russian Federation

  1870

Personality

In the time of reforms, Savrasov became one of the few pivotal figures of cultural life in Moscow. In the sixties, Savrasov’s friends and acquaintances gathered in the cozy and welcoming home of the renowned artist and talked and argued about art, discussed music, read literary novelties and debated contemporary social issues affecting both Moscow and rest of the world.

However, in 1871 Savrasov suffered the greatest tragedy of his life - in February his daughter died. It was a terrible blow for the artist who became gloomy and withdrawn. Savrasov, unable to withstand such hardships, became an alcoholic.

He was usually drunk and spent the last years of his life as a pauper, wandering from shelter to shelter, often dressed in rags.

Quotes from others about the person

• Isaak Levitan: "…One of the most profound Russian landscape-artists has passed away. With him, lyricism came to land­scape painting, and boundless love for one’s na­tive land. Yes, Savrasov was the father of Rus­sian landscape painting, and this undisputed merit of his will never be forgotten in the field of Russian art…"

Interests

• Artists

  John Constable, Alexandre Calame

Connections

Savrasov married Sophia Hertz, the sister of art historian K. Hertz, in 1857. The couple had several children. In their home they entertained artists and collectors including the famous Pavel Tretyakov.

In 1870 Savrasov’s daughter was born, but the baby died just a few days later (it was the third baby to die in the family of the renowned artist) and his wife became seriously ill. It was a real blow to Savrasov who became an alcoholic; his wife took their children, Vera and Evgenia, and left. Sophia did not even attend her husband’s funeral. His elder daughter Vera sometimes recalled her father refused to teach her painting and sculpture, as he was sure that all artists live only to starve to death one day.

From 1893 to the end of his life, Savrasov lived in Dorogomilovo-Tishinsky Lane with Ekaterina Matveevna Morgunova, a commoner. They had two children - a son Alexey Alekseevich Morgunov and a daughter Nadezhda. Their son Aleksey would later become a reasonably good vanguard artist.

Father:

Kondraty Artemyevich Savrasov

Spouse:

Sophia Hertz

Brother:

Nikolai Kondratievich Sovrasov

Daughter:

Vera Savrasova

Daughter:

Evgenia Savrasova

Mistress:

Ekaterina Matveevna Morgunova

Son:

Alexey Alekseevich Morgunov

Daughter:

Nadezhda Morgunova

patron:

Pavel Tretyakov

teacher:

Karl Rabus

Friend:

Vasily Perov

pupil:

Isaac Levitan

pupil:

Konstantin Korovin

References

• Aleksey Savrasov
• Aleksey Kondratevich Savrasov
• Aleksey Savrasov
• Aleksey Kondratevich Savrasov