Landscape "Lake in the forest. Golden Autumn (Garnet Water) ' [1912, oil, canvas, 116.5 x 142.5 cm, signed p.d.: S. Žukovskij 1912 (notation in cyrillic Russian), Kharkiv Art Museum, Z-ru 330, Kharkiv, Ukraine]
Stanislav Žukovskij's impressionist experience allowed him to create one of the best works in this trend in 1912, entitled 'Lake in the Forest. Golden autumn (dark blue water)'. The painting was the result of the painter's tireless work in the open air. It was this experience that led him to a deep understanding of the role of light in creating a truly visible image of the world and to a careful study of its significance in nature. The indissoluble optical unity of light and colour, the transfer of colour contrasts and colour reflections found in nature onto the canvas, became at the same time the basic principle of colour.
Żukowski maintained a certain distance from direct perception and simple reproduction in painting of the luminous transformation of colours in nature. He planned the colour scheme of the canvas, avoided excessive fragmentation and mottling of reflections, and strove to create thoughtful and balanced basic colour masses. A novelty in the landscape in question is the concept of colour harmony. The canvas depicts the edge of a forest on the shore of a lake on a sunny day. The choice of colours should be considered thoughtful and reasonably limited. The colour scheme of the painting is dominated by several deliberately chosen colour sets. The blue of the water and sky, the ochre-brown warmth of the shores and the gold of the leaves are clearly visible, close to pure and free colour.
The juxtaposition of warm and cold colours and shades becomes the guiding colour idea of the painting. On all planes, warm and cold colours intermingle. Warm, brown, yellow and reddish-brown colours are woven into the cold, light blue colour of the water in reflections and reflections with short and vigorous brushstrokes. In contrast, the intense blue sky is warmed by white clouds, with light golden and ochre tones. In parts of the sky, there is a range of clouds with light purple and violet tones.
An ochre-coloured p repaint shines through under the olive-brown paint of the shore. The shadows from the group of trees on the shore do not have cold tones, they are warm and saturated with dark brown tones and only under the blue and green fir trees do they have a softened olive colour. The leaves of the trees are saturated with the golden, yellow and ochre colours of the autumn palette. A piece of coastline in the background, with bands of pale yellow and light pink vegetation, colourfully supports the foreground of the painting. In Żukowski's work, the colours can be arranged in an almost patterned grid, with red, orange and brown patches appearing on the intense blue of the water. The artist freely transforms nature: he enlarges the leaves, creating almost mosaic arrangements of spots in the pond, or, on the contrary, creates a dense combination into a yellow mass.
A free creative transformation of the true image of nature, the degree of colour processing is such that one can claim that Żukowski has created a logically ordered colour structure of landscapes. The critic V. Lobanov, analysing the artist's work, drew a conclusion that aptly assessed the innovativeness of his works during this period:
"In his best works [...] he boldly and decisively used all the colours, ethereal aerial light and spatial discoveries of the new European painting. Żukowski's landscapes were always sharply captured, comprehensively considered and beautifully structured in composition. The high painterly qualities of his paintings determined their success at exhibitions and ensured their long life in art" [translated from Russian].
Zhukovsky consolidated these innovative achievements in a whole series of landscapes with lake and river motifs. The painting 'River' (1904) from the Odesa Art Museum should be considered a pearl in his collection of works.
Very important for the artist was his first contact with and observation of nature. It was the most important part of the creative process for him. This is confirmed by J. Sawicki's memoirs:
"When he was in the open air he (S. Żukowski - I.S.) did not speak, all the time he was carefully observing what he saw in front of him".
Żukowski developed his own colour structure for each season and weather conditions.
The landscape 'River' depicts a salty and rainy day and combines blue, green and grey colours. The neutral grey of the sky is correlated with the green zone of the foreground and the parallel grey-blue of the water. These three colours form a single mass of cold colours. The grey and blue, on the other hand, are present in all the colour zones, creating a relational effect between them. This distribution of tones makes the picturesque surface of the painting vivid and varied. The expressiveness is brought out by comparing the different qualities of each colour - blue, dark blue and a whole range of greens. These are open local colours, written with different depths of tone and spotted grey (close to white in places). The strong and expressive silhouette of the leaves is drawn in a darker, muted and complex colour, combining many warm and cold varieties of greens in olive, blue-green, grey-blue. The layer of paint has been applied dynamically in a complex rhythm of strokes that captures the movement of air, the feel of wind gusts in the treetops, the rhythm of flowing clouds, water and flowing shadows interspersed with rare flashes of sunlight and reflections. The colour scheme is constructed as a consonance of close cold colours. Due to the similarity of the three colours lying next to each other on the chromatic wheel, no contrast appears between them. In his subsequent works, Żukowski actively used this method of colour image construction in his landscape compositions with water motifs.