The “pure” landscape was the dominant genre in the work of the painter Yakov Weber. He considered himself to be a “natural born landscape painter” who loved nature with all his soul. The poetic sentiment of his works appears to bring his art closer to the landscapes of the Peredvizhniki artist and to the pieces of his colleagues from the Union of Russian Artists, but at the same time, Weber adds a different, individual edge to his works.

The painting “Forest Landscape” from the collection of the Engels Museum of Local Lore shows a simple, unassuming scene. A young wooded patch against a cloudless sky, low trees with yellow and emerald foliage and crowns cut off by the edge of the canvas, and blue shadows on an amber field of grass — all this attracts the eye. The color scheme, the juxtaposition of smooth brushwork and impasto painting create a sense of beauty and awe of nature, a feeling of joy from a sunny day. The influence of Konstantin Korovin and his lessons of Impressionism can be felt in many respects: the paints, generously scattered by the master’s bold brushwork, play in the sun with vibrant colors. Weber’s studies, always large in size, are not inferior in their artistic value to the large pictures painted in the studio. The artist liked to paint his studies from life in the oak woods of the settlement of Shcherbakovka. Sometimes such trips were not safe. In the 1950s, at the age of 83, Yakov Weber decided to write a story “Surrounded by Wolves”, where he gave a colorful and skillful description of his encounter with a wolf in an oak wood. He wrote the story under the pseudonym “Volzhanin”. While working in the oak woods, he saw a wolf sitting behind his back, which “sat motionless, like a scarecrow, and even looked into his eyes without blinking”. The artist, “following the habit he had had from his youthful years of being polite and friendly to all those he met, bowed to this wolf as well.“

Yakov Weber is undoubtedly the most important artist of the Republic of Volga Germans, whose authority was universally recognized. Weber is the only artist of the Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic of the Volga Germans who received the honorary title of Honored Art Worker.