ostroukhov golden autumn c1887 Ilya Ostrouhov (1858-1929)

Description of the painting "Golden Autumn" by Ilya Ostroukhov

We are faced with a rather bold decision by the artist to depict autumn in the forest, almost through a tangle of branches - in the picture there are no rivers, no clouds, no rain (the usual signs of autumn) - only barely discernible, among the golden leaffall, the blackening trunks of trees. The sun, obviously, has not risen long ago; in the picture, judging by the shadows and the liveliness of the two forks on the forest path, it is close to noon, but it is still the first half of the day. A very rare in its sophistication, the landscape is in golden tones.

A few reds can be discerned among the leaves, and forty black and white "tailcoats" can also be seen, but the golden, sun-soaked glow of the leaves prevails over the entire gamut. Somewhere and there are islands of grass, still green in summer, and between the branches and falling leaves you can discern a dim blue sky - but it is not this that fascinates Ostroukhov on his canvas, but the way he managed to convey the "dance" and the whirling flight of the falling leaves.

The picture is all filled with some kind of joyful movement and - it is a very "talkative" picture for the sophisticated viewer. "We are joyfully spinning!" - informs the rustling of the leaves, "now we’re going to fly away too!" - cheerfully warns the perky magpies. The trunk of the oak tree in the background, which is braided by smaller trees, on the contrary, as if telling the viewer of the forest’s resilience: "we will survive this autumn too!" And, as a result, a citizen who has glanced even in the dank autumn at the museum will leave this picture with a sense of joyful amazement. And with a desire to get out on nature. Or at least to sit "In Abramtsevo Park", as Ostroukhov’s second famous autumn landscape is called.

The picture is full of wonder: it’s rare to see a picture of an early autumn forest "rejoicing" in a landscape. And this is all the more surprising, because Ilya Semenovich Ostroukhov never trained as a professional artist, he took only private lessons in painting. And it is a pity that his landscapes are less known than paintings by Shishkin, Levitan or Polenov.