After moving from St. Petersburg to Penza and making several trips in 1910, the artist Ivan Silych Goryushkin-Sorokopudov bought a small estate in the village of Ivanovka. It is located just 40 kilometers from Penza, so the distance was not an issue, and the artist combined his work at the Penza Art School with creative activity.

Ivan Goryushkin-Sorokopudov left the Russian capital wishing to find peace of mind and balance after several stressful years. This is why he happily accepted the invitation to become a teacher at the Penza Art School in 1908 and eagerly joined the school’s teaching staff.

The artist described this decision in his autobiography,

In many of his landscapes, Ivan Goryushkin-Sorokopudov depicted his beloved Ivanovka. In these works, he conveyed his perception of nature.

In his landscapes, historical paintings, and genre scenes, the artist often used chiaroscuro, strong contrasts between light and dark. He would place the foreground into shadow, while filling the middle-ground and the background with light. As a result, he achieved a spatial perspective while maintaining a decorative effect of the color palette. An example of this is the painting titled “Winter”.

Ivan Goryushkin-Sorokopudov depicted thatched-roof rickety wooden houses. He added bluish frost, shimmering against the pink sky, dark fences, and houses buried in snow. In all of this, he revealed harmony and lyricism. The rickety houses give the viewer a sense of cozy antiquity.