“The Rooks Have Returned” is a painting by one of the founders of the Itinerant movement, Alexey Kondratyevich Savrasov. It depicts rooks that have arrived after winter. They are diligently building their nests, as if not noticing the snow still lying around. The birds know for sure – spring has already come. Hope turns into confidence – a new life is possible! The gaze from the chaos of wet snow with the help of the contrast of black wings goes to the sky.

The temple in the background with peeling plaster also rushes upward with its sharp forms. The church from Molvitino (now Susanino) unobtrusively reminds us of the resurrection of Christ. This is the essence of the Russian soul – from poverty and unattractiveness to soar in thoughts to the highest spheres. But not only the birds, the temple and the birches are the objects of the depiction. The landscape depicts the invisible soul of man in an inconceivable way. No one else has been able to achieve this effect.

Painting “The Rooks Have Returned” by Alexey Kondratyevich Savrasov – a landscape and portrait of the Russian soul

Title of the painting: “The Rooks Have Come Back”.

Author: Alexey Kondratievich Savrasov (1830-1897).

Year of painting: 1871.

Size: 62 x 48.5 cm.

Style: Realism.

Genre: Landscape.

Technique: Oil painting.

Material: Canvas.

Location: State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

Alexey Kondratievich Savrasov lived and worked in the 19th century and specialized in landscape painting.

The artist’s early paintings were impersonal and idealized. A touch of European gloss was found even in natural images of Russian nature. But the death of his newborn daughter turned Savrasov’s understanding of eternal questions upside down. Only after the tragedy did he manage to see and depict the transition from winter to spring in a new way – as a symbol of the rebirth of the soul against the backdrop of an ugly reality.

In order to live on, you must accept your grief. So look at this unadorned spring slush. You see it every year and perhaps grumble about the dirt on your shoes. But it is this moisture that becomes the life-giving basis for nature’s rebellion from frost death. The rooks have returned after winter and with their emphasized blackness confirm that cold and misfortune will no longer win.

The painting, imbued with the hope of change, became the beginning of a realistic Russian landscape. Painters stopped being embarrassed by broken roads and trees not combed to perfection. The Itinerant movement was born, moving Russian art of that time from a dead stop. The Tretyakov Gallery became the canvas’ permanent home, and numerous author’s replicas flew like rooks all over the world.