The collection of the Engels Museum of Local Lore houses a painting by Yakov Yakovlevich Weber “Blizzard. Horse Under the Shelter.” This is the artist’s replica of his work, created upon graduation from the Penza Art School.

The influence of Konstantin Savitsky, Weber’s teacher, can be felt in the large size of the canvas, the motif typical of the Peredvizhniki artists, and the technical and compositional methods of creating the image. The landscape motif is expressed in the language of the genre scene. A cloudy winter day. It is chilly and miserable. A horse stands under the shelter, chickens buried themselves in straw in a sleigh, colored cloths flutter in the wind. The artist conveys a vivid sense of the winter storm with the help of a brownish-ocher color scheme. With all the succinct and sparse details, the painting is notable for its emotional expressiveness.

Yakov Weber admitted, “There are artists who claim that it was not them who chose art, but art chose them. However vaguely this may be said, I am inclined to count myself among them. Art, which chose me to serve it, offered me nothing but pure happiness.” At the outset of his career as an artist, he came to Moscow to enter the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, but did not succeed. He spent the next year studying in the workshop of Konstantin Korovin, but again his studies were brief, as the famous artist left for Paris. Weber was destined to continue his education at the newly opened Penza Art School under Konstantin Savitsky, a Peredvizhniki artist and professor of landscape painting. Along with the subjects of his specialty, where Yakov showed brilliant results, there was a course of general education. He found it particularly difficult as he did not know the Russian language well. However, Weber overcame all difficulties and graduated with flying colors.

The painting “Blizzard. Horse Under the Shelter” was shown at the Spring Academic Exhibition, reproduced in the magazine “Niva”, and until 1968 was kept in the building of the Warsaw Station in Leningrad.