Landscape "Spring Evening" [1904, oil, canvas, 87 x 143.5 cm, signed p.d.: S. Žukovskij (notation in cyrillic Russian), National Art Museum in Odesa, inv. no. Ż-497, Odesa, Ukraine]
In Zhukovskiy's next painting entitled. 'Spring Evening' (1904) shows the combination of a new impressionist vision and painting technique with a traditional motif. The painting was donated to the Odesa Museum of Art from the Odesa Fund Museum in 1923. By this time, the canvas was in the private collection of E.K. Petrokokino (Odesa) was presented at the exhibition 'Paintings of the Odesa Fund Museum' (1926, Odesa). "Spring Evening", as well as other paintings by Zhukovsky created during this period, can testify to the initiation of a new, intimate type of lyrical landscape in his work. This novelty did not lie in the rather banal content that was characteristic of the work of the Peripateticists. The work was intended to evoke emotions associated with plein-air impressionist painting.
The subject matter of the painting remains ordinary. In the foreground, a wooden shed and a fragment of a gabled roof are presented on the left, while a tree is visible on the right. The diagonal lines of the shed situated on the diagonal of the painting balance the composition of the vertical group of birches, spruces and a wooden fence in the foreground. Also the leaning tree in the foreground, on the right side of the painting, breaks the monotony of the vertical lines dominating in the background and brings balance to the composition. Behind the trees on the right, the silhouettes of village cottages are drawn. In the centre of the composition, in its upper left field, on a small hill behind the birch trees, the artist has placed the silhouette of an Orthodox church. Here, too, a courtyard covered with snow, in blue and white early spring colours, appears. At first glance, the composition depicts an ordinary fragment of nature, which delighted the painter. Stanislaw Żukowski's landscapes have always been distinguished by the logic of building compositions using diagonal and parabolic lines, with the horizon either low or high. The compositions were characterised by a balance between architectural and natural forms. In the landscape 'Spring Evening', the centre of the composition was separated by colour and the asymmetrical location of architectural and natural objects in space.
The only thing that speaks of spring in this painting is the masterfully depicted moist spring air. Despite the rather cold evening, it alone conveys a sense of spring. The poetic mood is conveyed through the painterly means of expression of the plein-air painting, it is the richness of the colour palette, the skill of creating harmony, the unification of the contrasting rhythms of colour planes and patches characteristic of the spring palette - the opposition of cold and warm colours of the decorative shadow system in a single tone. The texture is also dynamic, where paints were applied directly to the canvas with brushstrokes of different lengths. The evening sky breathes a multitude of delicate tones - reflected on the surface of the snow. The sun hides behind the horizon and illuminates the still cold world with its last rays. The warmth of the ochre-coloured shadows, in shades of yellow and olive, glides lightly across the tree trunks, parts of the courtyard, the edge of the sky and harmoniously crosses the boundaries of warm tones. Cold colours become dominant - from blues, light greys and purples to deep navy blue and dark green colours.
Against a bright background of blue snow with white crests, the grey, pale purple and light brown colours of the old wood from which the shed is built ring out in juicy contrast. On its roof, a beautiful decoration is created by the rendered dark blue shadows cast by the branches of the tree opposite the shed. The wooden fence and a group of dark green spruce trees remain in deep grey-blue tones. With a light brush, the artist has shown the silhouette of the shed, the fence and the group of trees. Each separate brushstroke models the quintessence of the form, showing the painter's creative temperament. The manner of the brushstroke conveys the flickering of the evening light and ether, which soften the contours and objects. Stanisław Żukowski consciously gives his paintings a poetic freedom, a perception of the world and nature, freeing himself from any ideas and social motifs of art.