“Martian sun”, Konstantin Fedorovich Yoon – overview of the painting 
- Posted by Konstantin Fedorovich Yoon
- Museum: Tretyakov Gallery
- Year: 1915
Overview of the painting :
March sun – Konstantin Fedorovich Yoon. Oil on canvas. 107 x 42 cm
March is the month when winter slowly, reluctantly and with great difficulty renounces its rights. This complex struggle is allegorically shown in a peaceful and lyrical picture in mood. Everything is very peaceful and pastoral on it – a charming village landscape, a street completely covered with a snow blanket, prototyped by people and animals, paths full of sledding. On the way, horses with young horsemen jump a little higher on it, and a glorious red-white teenage foal frolics a little higher on it, cleverly dodging from a playful little dog.
What has been captured on the canvas for the spring month, and ringing streams are about to flow through the streets, says only one inconspicuous circumstance – warm sunlight. It floods everything around, forcing objects to cast cold bluish-violet shadows.
The branches of trees clean from snow and their trunks are painted in golden lemon shades that look contrasting against the background of cold tones and paints used in all other places. Crons at the very tops are touched by a gentle lilac color – this is the influence of the warming sun that swells the first kidneys.
The clear sky also speaks of the approach of spring. It has not yet acquired that saturated turquoise shade, characteristic of spring, but has already lost the typical winter color of lead. There is no trace of the gloom of winter. From the whole canvas comes calm, a sense of happiness and a premonition of the imminent revival and heyday of nature.
The talented landscape painter used competent techniques in this picture to convey the volume, color and even texture of snow. Looking at the road with ruts and tracks, you just physically feel still freezing air, you hear a creak of snow under the hoofs of horses, warm rays of the sun on your skin. This is the foreboding of spring.