Painting by Kuindzhi "After the Rain" - a romantic landscape

Arkhip Kuindzhi (1842-1910) was a painter who did not recognize any traditions, constantly looked for a new one, and if he did not find it, he stopped exhibiting. Arkhip Ivanovich not only loved nature, but also knew how to transfer its captivating beauty to the canvas.

Fruitful year

In 1879, a mature master, whose work is always expected with impatience, A. Kuindzhi, all amazed with new works, which were like a triptych. They were completely different "North" and "Birch Grove" and even more distant from them painting Kuindzhi "After the rain." They are different in both the artistic manner and the place of their writing. For the image selected Russian North, the middle band of Russia with a birch grove and Little Russia. All of Russia is represented. And how different it is! In Ukraine, the landscape was scrutinized and Kuinji's painting After the Rain was written. Despite the fact that these paintings are very different, in all the works can be felt the influence of impressionism. With him, the artist met in 1875, when he went to Paris to prepare for the long-awaited wedding with his beloved girl.

Arkhip Kuinji

It was a colorful figure both externally and internally. He was a stocky, strong man. I walked waddling, straightening my shoulders and putting my chest forward. A beautiful face with a high forehead and the right features adorned with curvy hair.

Being a very wealthy man, since his works were very valued and cost dearly, Arkhip Ivanovich spent a penny on himself and the family. But he helped the students.

He had a hobby - birds. Ordinary city titmouses, jackdaws, sparrows, crows. He fed them daily at the same time, and they flocked to him from all over the city. And he treated the sick. Absolutely irreconcilable in everything that concerned art, with feathered friends, Arkhip Ivanovich became a completely different person.

"After the Rain", Kuindzhi's painting: description

The variability of natural phenomena was of great interest to the painter. He always animated nature. She is a living being whose life is directly connected with man. They exist in indissoluble unity.

In this romantic landscape the day is slipping towards evening. A thunderstorm passed, but one third of the upper part of the sky was occupied by the remaining storm clouds. On them lay the reflection of a green meadow. The clouds will soon be scattered by the wind and carried away to the left where the thunderstorm left. There they are still dark and scary. Closer to the ground on the right, they lighten. Against their backdrop, you can see hamlets with a few huts. On the whiteness of the walls - the reflections of the strikingly bright green grass. This meadow, filling the third of the canvas, played with all the colors under the sun, which Kuinji's painting "After the Rain" does not show. About him you can only guess.

Through the amazing greenery of the meadow, in which the artist with great skill used all the shades of green, is a small river-trickle. It starts wide right from the frame and leads, curiously bending, to the farm. So the green color is complemented by violet-black.

The color of the picture is lively and purely technical. The artist uses several basic tones, in which the intensity of color is intensified. Painting Kuindzhi "After the rain" with the river on it becomes more dynamic. There are two horizontal composition lines (sky and meadow) and vertical (river).

It animates the landscape, still frozen after the storm, which has not yet recovered from the rain and gusts of wind, a horse. She is already peacefully grazing as if nothing had happened.

The spectator is waiting for the rainbow, which will appear after the rain. The picture of Kuindzhi suggests its appearance.

This bright, full of feeling is a work in which the emotion of nature, renewed and washed by rain, is transmitted. The picture is harmonious, and it is immediately transferred to the viewer.

Effect at exhibitions

Three paintings, which the artist exhibited in 1879 and later, hit the viewer. The work "After the Rain" (a picture by Arkhip Kuindzhi) aroused bewilderment among artists and collectors. PM Tretyakov "Ukrainian Night" did not buy. He doubted the colors that shone on her. Artists worried about the durable colors of the master, which he made according to his own recipes. But the public was just bursting into exhibitions where Kuinji's paintings were. Works of the master are loved even today, one hundred years after they were written.