On the dynamic landscape ‘An Old Tree’, the painter Dmitry Moskvin depicted a perennial birch tree that grew on Krasnaya Gora — a natural, cultural and historical monument located near the Vetluga River around the village of Varnavino. By the sketchy nature of the picture, it can be assumed that the painter created it from life, working on the plain air. This is true, but these places also have great personal meaning for the painter.
Moskvin was born in 1993 near Nizhny Novgorod, graduated from the Nizhny Novgorod School of Arts as a painter and a teacher, and then attended courses at the Ilya Glazunov Academy at the Faculty of Architecture in Moscow. In 2014, he returned to Nizhny Novgorod that he knew since his youth, where he became a teacher at a local Children’s Art School in the village of Varnavino.
This was the period when he painted the sketch “An Old Tree”. Most often, in painting, the sketch is considered something secondary. A sketch is often painted from life in order to capture a certain part of the nature, especially when it comes to changing lighting or weather conditions. Also, sketches were often used as the first esquisses that played a role in assembling the final version of the painting: they should indicate the fundamental artistic moments, which the final version of the canvas was based on.
However, more and more painters from the new generation think of sketches as of paintings in their own right. This is what Moskvin did in his work “An Old Tree”, painted in 2015. A very old birch is depicted here, slightly to the right of the center: it is believed to be 100 years old or more. Unfortunately, in the summer of 2019, a severe hurricane broke it. Now a church in honor of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker is being built in its place.
While working at the art school in Varnavino, Moskvin completed a whole series of spectacular sketches, capturing the beauty of the local nature. On his sketch “Vetluga”, he captured the severe northern beauty of the taiga river, and the sketch “Pines” also explores this subject a lot, but the emphasis here is on the riverbanks’ flora. It is interesting that all these sketches have been created during one season: most likely, the early spring, because there is always snow on these paintings.
The beauty of the territories near the Vetluga River inspired, alongside with Moskvin, the writer Vladimir Korolenko and the lyric poet Nikolai Rubtsov, the publicist Pavel Melnikov-Pechyorsky and the outstanding prose writer Mikhail Prishvin. The oldest birch of the Red Mountain was also the subject of the painting ‘White Birch. A Tree’ by the remarkable Mari painter Ivan Yamberdov.
Moskvin was born in 1993 near Nizhny Novgorod, graduated from the Nizhny Novgorod School of Arts as a painter and a teacher, and then attended courses at the Ilya Glazunov Academy at the Faculty of Architecture in Moscow. In 2014, he returned to Nizhny Novgorod that he knew since his youth, where he became a teacher at a local Children’s Art School in the village of Varnavino.
This was the period when he painted the sketch “An Old Tree”. Most often, in painting, the sketch is considered something secondary. A sketch is often painted from life in order to capture a certain part of the nature, especially when it comes to changing lighting or weather conditions. Also, sketches were often used as the first esquisses that played a role in assembling the final version of the painting: they should indicate the fundamental artistic moments, which the final version of the canvas was based on.
However, more and more painters from the new generation think of sketches as of paintings in their own right. This is what Moskvin did in his work “An Old Tree”, painted in 2015. A very old birch is depicted here, slightly to the right of the center: it is believed to be 100 years old or more. Unfortunately, in the summer of 2019, a severe hurricane broke it. Now a church in honor of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker is being built in its place.
While working at the art school in Varnavino, Moskvin completed a whole series of spectacular sketches, capturing the beauty of the local nature. On his sketch “Vetluga”, he captured the severe northern beauty of the taiga river, and the sketch “Pines” also explores this subject a lot, but the emphasis here is on the riverbanks’ flora. It is interesting that all these sketches have been created during one season: most likely, the early spring, because there is always snow on these paintings.
The beauty of the territories near the Vetluga River inspired, alongside with Moskvin, the writer Vladimir Korolenko and the lyric poet Nikolai Rubtsov, the publicist Pavel Melnikov-Pechyorsky and the outstanding prose writer Mikhail Prishvin. The oldest birch of the Red Mountain was also the subject of the painting ‘White Birch. A Tree’ by the remarkable Mari painter Ivan Yamberdov.
