The Rooks Have Returned
A thaw beginning around a village church at Susanino, in the Russian province of Kostroma — the founding picture of the Russian ‘mood landscape’.
Resurrection Church in Susanino
The painting shows a real, identified place that you can find today. The exact spot the artist worked from is not necessarily known.
The Rooks Have Returned — at a glance
- Artist
- Alexei Savrasov (1830–1897)
- Year
- 1871
- Movement
- Realism (Peredvizhniki / Wanderers)
- Place
- Susanino (formerly Molvitino), Kostroma province, Russia
- Viewpoint
- The edge of the village by the Church of the Resurrection — the church still stands; foreground composed
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- c. 62 × 48 cm
- Now at
- State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow
Overview
The Rooks Have Returned is the most famous Russian landscape of the nineteenth century, painted by Alexei Savrasov in 1871 and shown at the first exhibition of the Peredvizhniki (the ‘Wanderers’). It shows a huddle of bare birch trees full of returning rooks, a pond of grey meltwater, patchy snow, and behind them a village church with a hipped bell tower under a damp, changeable sky. It is oil on canvas, about 62 by 48 cm, and it hangs in the State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.
The story behind the painting
Scholarship Savrasov painted the study for the picture in the spring of 1871 in the village of Molvitino, in Kostroma province north-east of Moscow, then worked it up into the exhibited canvas. The critic Ivan Kramskoi singled it out as the one landscape at the exhibition with a real ‘soul’, and it was bought at once by Pavel Tretyakov.
Where was The Rooks Have Returned painted?
Museum interpretation The church in the background is the Church of the Resurrection at Molvitino — the village was renamed Susanino in the twentieth century — in the Susaninsky district of Kostroma province. The white church with its tent-roofed bell tower still stands and now houses a local museum. Savrasov adjusted the foreground trees and pond, so the picture is a composed image built around a real building rather than a strict view.
What is in the painting?
In the foreground, a clump of thin, crooked birches, their upper branches crowded with rooks and untidy nests; more birds wheel above and settle on the snow. A curved pool of grey meltwater lies at their feet, the snow around it rotten and pierced with mud. Beyond a fence, the white church and its bell tower, a few izbas, and flat brown fields running to a low horizon under a wide grey sky with patches of pale blue.
Look closely
The rooks and nests
The bare birch tops are crowded with returning rooks and their ragged nests; more birds circle overhead.
The meltwater pool
A curved pool of grey thaw-water lies among rotten, mud-pierced snow at the foot of the trees.
The church tower
The white church and its tent-roofed bell tower — the real Church of the Resurrection at Susanino — the one firm upright.
The crooked birches
Thin, awkward, asymmetrical trunks, deliberately un-picturesque.
The thin sunlight
A little watery warmth touches the church wall and the treetops — the season turning.
Analysis
Composition & perspective
A close, untidy foreground of trees and birds opens past a fence to the church and the flat distance.
Scholarship Savrasov builds the picture in bands — birches and meltwater near, fence and church in the middle, fields and sky beyond — and keeps the birches deliberately awkward and asymmetrical. The church tower is the one firm vertical in a scene of mud, water and bare twigs.
Colour and light
Greys, browns and dirty white, with a first thin warmth in the sky and on the church wall.
The palette is that of the Russian thaw: grey water and sky, brown earth, grey-white rotten snow, the black flecks of the rooks. A little watery sunlight touches the church and the tops of the birches — the first sign of the turning season.
Meaning and interpretation
Interpretations differ. What the artist documented, what museums and scholars propose, and later or speculative theories are marked and kept separate.
The mood landscape
The painting is credited with founding the Russian ‘landscape of mood’: an unspectacular, even drab motif — a muddy village edge — painted so that it carries a strong feeling, here of hope and the ache of a long winter ending.
A national image
Birches, thaw, a wooden village and a white church became, through this picture, a shorthand for the Russian land itself, endlessly echoed by later painters and writers.
History & provenance
Bought by Pavel Tretyakov straight from the 1871 exhibition, it has been in the Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, ever since, and is among its best-loved works.
Sources
- State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow — collection entry for Alexei Savrasov, ‘The Rooks Have Returned’ (‘Грачи прилетели’, 1871; oil on canvas, c. 62 × 48 cm)
- Susanino local museum (Church of the Resurrection) — history of the building
Frequently asked
Where was The Rooks Have Returned painted?
In and around the village of Molvitino — now called Susanino — in Kostroma province, north-east of Moscow. Savrasov painted the study there in the spring of 1871.
Is the church a real building?
Yes — the Church of the Resurrection at Susanino, a white church with a tent-roofed bell tower. It still stands and now holds a local museum.
What is happening in the scene?
The spring thaw is beginning: snow is rotting into grey meltwater, and rooks have flown back from the south to rebuild their nests in the bare birches — the traditional first sign of spring in central Russia.
Why is the painting so important in Russia?
It is seen as the founding work of the Russian ‘landscape of mood’ — an ordinary, even dreary motif painted so that it carries deep feeling — and its birches, thaw and white church became a national image.
Where is the painting now?
In the State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, which bought it from the 1871 exhibition.
