"Early Spring" by Alexei Savrasov

A late work by Alexei Savrasov (1830–1897), author of "The Rooks Have Returned", one of the founding members of the Society for Travelling Art Exhibitions and teacher of Isaac Levitan. The painting is dated to the late 1880s – early 1890s. By that time the artist had already been dismissed from the Moscow School of Painting (in 1882) and no longer appeared at exhibitions. The museum places his landscapes in the realist trend.

The canvas shows the steep bank of a wide, flooded river and a high sky. On the bank stands a hut half sunk into the ground, smoke rising from its chimney, surrounded by a wattle fence and birch trees with birds' nests. Streams run across the ground, snow still lies here and there, and the first grass is coming through. The water and sky are painted in blue tones, with dark clouds above and the sky turning pink below. The paint is applied in thin layers, with glazes giving the colour its transparency. Oil on canvas.