The final stage of Ivan Yakovlevich Bilibin’s landscape painting began after the artist returned from emigration to Leningrad in 1936.

During this period, Bilibin made trips to the Caucasian coast of the Black Sea, to Ukraine, to Crimea and brought back excellent watercolor landscapes from there. The landscapes are subtly picturesque and deep in transitions of tone, where the expressive pictorial manner of painting, characteristic of the French series, was harmoniously developed.

Bilibin passionately loved nature. This love, hidden behind the immaculate lines of his graphic works or concealed in a conventional fairy-tale scenery, becomes apparent in the artist’s landscapes.

In August-September 1940, Bilibin and his wife Alexandra Vasilievna Shchekatikhina-Pototskaya vacationed in the Crimea, visited Batiliman and the places where Bilibin’s dacha once was. The building was preserved, but it no longer belonged to the artist: the village administration was housed there.

From a letter from O. Akhmetova to Ivan Bilibin dated from April 8, 1939:

The watercolor “Bilibin’s Dacha in Batiliman” is one of the brightest examples of the artist’s late landscapes. A bare rocky slope, scorched grass and an old juniper tree appear before the viewer. The ringing silence is broken only by the sounds of cicadas and the distant rustle of the waves. There is a spicy scent of pine needles in the air, warmed up by the scorching rays of the southern sun. In the distance, the artist’s former dacha can be seen on the seaside slope. However, it is not the protagonist. The main role is given to a lonely tree, one half of which is dried up and the other half has living green branches.

Keeping in mind that Ivan Bilibin was highly educated, one can also think about the philosophical subtext of this image. A tree in fine arts is often associated with a person’s age, the years they have lived. Perhaps this old juniper, which is half dried up, but is still fighting for life, is an allegory for the fate of an elderly man. It so happened that this philosophical symbolism became prophetic. This artwork is a kind of farewell of Ivan Yakovlevich to Batiliman, where he spent some of the best days of his life and career.