Wood distances. 1880-1890-e Isaac Ilyich Levitan (1860-1900)

Description of Isaac Levitan’s painting "Forest Lands"

The main theme of Levitan’s work was Russian nature. He tirelessly praised it in his paintings, gave his heart to it, and painted it carefully and tenderly, as if a sloppy stroke could break the entire composition of the painting and destroy the idea. Or even to damage real live trees and grasses.

Among his paintings are many famous ones. When you look at them it’s easy to be infected with the artist’s love for the country, the feelings that overwhelmed him when he painted a picture.

Joy, triumph, hope for the future, sadness, quiet anticipation, melancholy - the palette of moods, conveyed by Levitan through the images of nature is almost endless and striking in its richness. After all, it would seem impossible to convey so many emotions through the woods and fields. But the artist, meanwhile, managed to do it.

"Forest Dales" is executed in green tones - in the picture you can find many shades of green, its mixtures with other colors and itself, because the picture shows a forest stretching to the horizon and somewhat resembling the sea.

Across a small field a country road runs into it - if you give free rein to your imagination, you can easily imagine how warm the road dust is and how pleasant it is to walk on it barefoot. But the road is not the main thing in the picture. The main thing in the picture is the forest. It is skilfully and precisely portrayed, it combines many shades of the same color and it is darker at the edge, and fades to the horizon, becomes light and almost nonexistent. And above it stretches a huge sky.

Levitan’s sky deserves a song - it’s always slightly faded, very accurate celestial color, it has yellow and white clouds, and stripes of pure azure and a little gray. It covers the forest like a dome, as boundless as it is.

And, looking at the picture, you involuntarily wonder where you can go if you go far away along this road, leading into the dark forest.