Autumn day. Sokolniki Isaac Ilyich Levitan (1860-1900)

Description of Isaac Levitan’s painting "Autumn Day. Sokolniki."

When one looks at I. Levitan’s painting "Autumn Day. Sokolniki," one involuntarily thinks, "Did Levitan paint this painting?"

Yes, here is the Levitan sky, high and deep. Huge white clouds are floating across the gray autumn sky. A damp haze hovers in the air. No rain, but it’s about to happen.

Levitan pines, mighty, aspiring, standing high impregnable wall on both sides of the alley. The giant trees, blocking each other, protect the quiet autumn, hidden in the rare bright colors of leaves of the young maples standing at a distance from each other. Thin trees have not yet completely shed their yellow leaves. They are scattered in bright, even patches along the park path.

The sandy path, yellow as autumn itself, goes far away, beyond the pines, into the sky. The foliage, already fallen, is piled along its edges. It seems to frame the light path. It runs between the greenery of grass, on which the fallen yellow leaves also stand out.

The painting clearly shows a broad manner of writing. The artist clearly marks the trunks of trees, their crowns, foliage. With the help of blurred colors creates an airiness of the landscape, conveys the autumnal dampness and silence.

All over the canvas one can feel the loneliness and never-ending melancholy and sorrow. These feelings are emphasized by the dark figure of a woman walking lonely towards the viewer. It is this figure and confuses connoisseurs of landscape painter Isaak Levitan.

No, it was not the great master of nature paintings depicted a woman in black. It was done by N. Chekhov, the brother of the famous writer. Perhaps clearly feeling the loneliness of his painter friend, Nikolai Pavlovich decided to enhance the impression by including a human image in the landscape.

Despite such dissonance and "not Levitan’s" manner of depiction, "Autumn Day. Sokolniki" is the first painting of the famous artist, which was purchased by P.M.Tretyakov.