March (picture of Levitan)

In 1894-1895, Levitan lived for several months in the Gorka estate, located one and a half kilometers from the village of Ostrovno , at that time located on the territory of Vyshnevolotsky district of the Tver province , and now part of the Udomelsky district of the Tver region . The estate belonged to Privy Councilor Ivan Nikolaevich Turchaninov , and his wife Anna Nikolaevna often spent time there with her daughters Varvara, Sophia and Anna ^{[8] [9] [10]} . The main building of the estate was a two-story house with a mezzanine painted in yellowish color. He is also depicted in the picture “March”, as well as in Levitan’s earlier pastel “Autumn. The Estate ”(1894) ^[10] , which is currently part of the collection of the Omsk Regional Museum of Fine Arts named after M. A. Vrubel ^{[11] [12]} .

Levitan met Anna Nikolaevna Turchaninova in the summer of 1894 in Ostrovno, where he visited the Ushakovs' estate with his companion, the artist Sofya Kuvshinnikova . Levitan and Turchaninova began an affair, which led to a quarrel and severance of relations with Kuvshinnikova. After that, Levitan moved to the Gorka estate and lived there in August and September 1894, and then returned there in the early spring of next year ^{[13] [14]} . Especially for him, a two-story house-workshop located on the shore of the lake was built on the estate’s territory ^[10] .

It was then, in March 1895, that the picture "March" was created. It was written completely from nature, without preliminary studies, in several sessions. The witness of Levitan’s work on the painting was Anya Turchaninov’s young daughter Anya (she was called Lyuly in the family), who helped the artist carry a box of paints, listened to his stories about the beauty of nature and admired how the future masterpiece was created ^[15] .

In the same period, Levitan wrote another painting - “Spring. Last Snow ”, which was subsequently in the collection of the Moscow philanthropist Vladimir Shmarovin . At present, her whereabouts are unknown, but the study of the same name ( 25.5 × 33.3 cm , oil on canvas, timing , inv. J-4261) ^[16] .

The painting “March” was exhibited at the 24th exhibition of the Association of Traveling Art Exhibitions (“Wanderers”), which was held in St. Petersburg and Moscow in 1896–1897, as well as at the All-Russian Industrial and Art Exhibition of 1896 in Nizhny Novgorod . In 1896, the painting was purchased from the author by Pavel Tretyakov ^[2] .

Gorka Manor did not survive the revolutionary upheavals of the early 20th century. In 1904, the house-workshop burned down, in which Levitan worked in the mid-1890s. In 1914, the Gork estate was sold to the merchant of the second guild, Aggey Aggeevich Markov. A few years after the revolution, in June 1923, the manor building was destroyed by fire (apparently as a result of arson) ^[10] .

Levitan painted a picture in the backyard of the Gorka estate, the wall of the main house of which is visible in the very right part of the picture ^[10] . A sunny March day, already beginning to melt snow, trees and a country road approaching the porch, where, basking in the sun, a horse with logs is quietly standing ^[17] . Dianka - that’s the name of the horse from Gorka’s estate — stands in the center of the landscape and forms an integral part of it ^{[8] [15]} .

The major, life-affirming motive of the picture shows the struggle of the passing winter and the coming spring, sunlight and cold snow. This is emphasized by the color contrast between the dark pine trees in the background and the light aspens trunks illuminated by the sunlight in front of them, which seem to stretch their branches towards the spring sun ^[18] . In particular, this upward tendency is complemented by a very high birdhouse on one of the trees, so it even seems that it is attached to a too thin branch ^[17] .

Shades of snow, blue shadows of trees and blue skies create a very picturesque picture - a plot that was later repeated more than once in the landscapes of other Russian artists ^[19] . According to Alexei Fedorov-Davydov , “after Levitan, such a motive became a favorite topic of Russian landscape painting, which occupied a large place in the works of Igor Grabar , Konstantin Yuon and others” ^{[6] [7]} .

Being close in plot to the famous painting by Alexei Savrasov “ Rooks Have Arrived ” (1871, State Tretyakov Gallery ), “March” differs significantly from it in painting ^[20] . The painting "March" is a vivid example of the so-called "Levitan landscape", in which, even depicting the "jubilant state of nature", the artist managed to preserve the lyrical shade of experience and sadness in the picture ^[4] .

It is believed that the paintings “March” and “ Golden Autumn ” painted in 1895 most clearly demonstrate the influence of impressionism on the artist's work ^[5] . Indeed, in the picture “Mart” there is “nervousness and pastiness of the smear ” inherent in impressionism, but at the same time there is no “impressionistic chance”. The thickness of the paint layer is uneven: relief strokes are used to depict snow, the sky is written in a more even layer, and in many other places the texture of the canvas appears ^[18] .

Sometimes, as a harbinger of the painting “March”, the landscape of the Russian artist-impressionist Konstantin Korovin “ Winter ” (1894, State Tretyakov Gallery ) is mentioned, which also depicts a horse with a sled standing at the village house. True, unlike the sunny-spring canvas of Levitan, the picture of Korovin depicts a gloomy winter day ^[21] .

Art critic Alexei Fedorov-Davydov in his article on the work of Isaac Levitan noted that the artist "rarely wrote winter and generally snow, more often depicting his remains in spring landscapes", but in 1895 he took up such a story. Fedorov-Davydov wrote: “We are talking about the painting“ March ”, in which everything only breathes with a premonition of spring and which is an image of a still sunny winter day. Turning to this new motive for himself, Levitan created a landscape that became a discovery in Russian landscape painting. So colorful and picturesque, with blue shades, no one before him wrote snow, lit by the sun; nobody portrayed the spring sky and trees like that ” ^{[6] [7]} .

The artist Boris Ioganson wrote that every time he sees the picture “March” he is “enchanted” in front of this miracle, and when he “manages to be outdoors in March or to sit in the city on the boulevard on a sunny March morning, he flickers in his thoughts comic paradox: “How amazingly nature imitates the“ Martha ”Levitan“ ” ^[22] .

In his memoirs, the artist Vasily Baksheev wrote that Levitan remained in his memory “as an artist, inextricably linked with the Russian national school of landscape”, while “deeply loving native nature, studying it tirelessly and embodying this nature in his works with great skill” . Further, evaluating the picture “March”, he wrote: “I consider his work“ March ”to be one of the best works of our school. This is the same pearl as Vasilyev’s Thaw , and Savrasov’s Rooks Have Arrived . There is so much spring heat in this landscape, so much light warming the sun. This is one of the best works of Levitan ” ^{[23] [24]} .

• List of paintings by Isaac Ilyich Levitan

• "March" in the database of the Tretyakov Gallery
• Levitan Isaac Ilyich - March, 1895 (unopened) (HTML). www.art-catalog.ru. Date of treatment March 31, 2015.