The north literally charmed Korovin, he enthusiastically told Serov: “What a wonderful land, North Wild! And there is not a single bit of anger from people here… And what kind of life, think, and what beauty! .. Tosha, I would like to stay here forever” . Korovin worked a lot and enthusiastically. The result of this was a large number of sketches, in which the painter, according to the apt expression of art historian Victor Nikolsky, “finally comprehended the charms of the color of silver shades and pearly opaline flickers.”
However, if in works brought from France, Korovin put forward the purely impressionistic problems – transmission of the air medium at some particular moment, in northern works the images are more stable and monumental. Struck by the majestic and mighty beauty of the Polar region, the way of life of people, who every day had to fight for their existence, the master tried to capture the most significant aspects of the North: “Each of his northern sketches is an experience often devoid of drama and hence of inner tension, has a well-defined plot. “
With his works, brought from this journey, Korovin brilliantly answered the constant statements about his frivolity, which often expressed not only by the artists of the older generation, but also by his peers. Indeed, how much depth is invested, for example, in a small study of Winter in Lapland, not accidentally acquired personally by Pavel Tretyakov.
Korovin conveyed to him the sensation of the terrible severity of the polar nights. The motif of this work is not terse. On the shore of either a frozen river, or a bay stretched a village consisting of three huts, shrouded in a cold blue-lead veil of a descending polar night. An empty foreground, a large space coverage give an all epic sound.
Passing cold, frosty air, the artist does not insulate the color etude. It is dominated by gray-blue shades, not animated by any color. Everything is full of silence, austere, frost-bound nature. But the work can not be called poor in color. Master finely searches for valleys for snow, distinguishing it from ice, frozen water, from fog, from the sky. And the snow is written in a broad brushstroke, so that the viewer feels its friability; more evenly and densely put the paint when depicting the ice and the sky, light touches of the brush depicts the fog that envelops the mountains on the horizon. This materiality, materiality, along with the conciseness of the compositional solution, is the main means of creating a definite, clear and at the same time majestic image.
Looking at the sketch, you marvel at the skill with which Korovin, with exceptionally picturesque means, accurately conveyed the completely special character of the Arctic winter. How unlike this work on his same became a classic for Russian painting work in the winter, created in the same year at home.
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