An ideal example of a typical manor interior of the Zhukovsky heyday is one of the most mundane and harmonious works of his – “Joyful May”, where the connection between landscape and interior is inseparable. The emotional mood of the picture comes from the quivering charm of the park, painted with a soft May sun to pastel-tender greenish-gray, ash-lilac, pale pinkish tones.
Sunlight from the garden slid into the open windows of the house, filling it with the breath of spring, a special feeling of joyful delight. Some kind of new beauty opened up in this discreet setting of the room, in its log walls and old armchairs and portraits hanging in the piers between the windows, in soft-lilac colors on the windowsill.
Sounding in full force, the color accents do not look like scattered decorative spots, they find their development in all the colorful richness of the surrounding, which leads to a true coloristic harmony, so corresponding to the emotional character of the image. At the X exhibition “Union of Russian Artists” the picture was enthusiastically met with criticism and was immediately bought in the Tretyakov Gallery.
Alexander Benois wrote about this: “… we will agree with one museum purchase, this is” Joyful May “by Zhukovsky, taken to the Tretyakov Gallery, I will be told here is a repetition of the motif used already by Zhukovsky and had time to fill the edge… Hall in the manor house with open windows open in the garden, spring sun, mahogany furniture, and even violets on the windowsills have not been forgotten – we’ve seen this more than once, but for the very fact of repetition I can not blame Zhukovsky.
An artist who is vividly interested in a topic, quite naturally returns to it repeatedly – wanting to express it more fully. In addition, in this case, Zhukovsky achieved the intended goal. The sun shines brighter than the former, the fresh air seems more joyful, the special mood of the thawing, reviving after the winter cold, is more fully transmitted after a long shutter of the house; in addition, the whole picture is written with the valuable freedom of technology, which is acquired only when in all its parts the task set by the artist is clarified.
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