Corner of a House. Winter

"I can’t remember a time when I was not drawing, cannot imagine myself with no pencil, paints and brushes " – wrote Igor Grabar, a famous painter, art historian and art critic, head of the Tretyakov Gallery for many years. His early work was related to the Union of Russian Artists, an association of Impressionists which emerged in Moscow in the early twentieth century. The painting "Corner of a House. Winter" dates from a period when, upon his return from Europe, Grabar enthusiastically started to paint Russian winter. Eventually this became a key part of his work, and cemented the artist’s reputation as "the poet of Russian snow”. Grabar painted almost all his winter landscapes from life, partly inspired by the French Impressionists and also seeking, as he put it himself, "to completely convey the natural landscape, to make it impossible to distinguish between nature and the painted canvas” . To convey the sense of a well-trodden path across a snow-covered yard Grabar uses a broad brushstroke and special, optical color palette which helps to introduce a sense of three-dimensional space into the painting.