Alexei Savrasov

Alexei Savrasov painted many landscapes, but Russians remember one. In 1871 he showed 'The Rooks Have Returned', a modest view of bare birch trees, melting snow, and a small church under a damp grey sky, with rooks fussing at their nests. It caught the exact ache of early spring in the Russian north, and it became one of the most loved paintings in the country.

He was one of the founders of the intimate, mood-filled Russian landscape, and a devoted teacher at the Moscow art school, where his pupils included the young Isaac Levitan, who would carry that lyrical vein further.

The later years were bleak. Savrasov drank heavily, lost his teaching post and his family, and slid into poverty, turning out cheap copies of his famous rooks for a few roubles. He died in a Moscow hospital for the poor in 1897, and almost no one came to the funeral of the man who had painted the spring the whole country knew by heart.