At the age of 12, Ivan Ivanovich was assigned to the first Kazan gymnasium. However, after studying there until the 5th grade, he made a decision and left the gymnasium. Instead, he entered the Moscow School of Architecture, Painting and Sculpture. After graduating from this institution, he continued to study at the Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg: there he was a student of S.M. Vorobyov. Classes at the Academy did not satisfy Shishkin, so he stubbornly wrote sketches and painted on the island of Valaam and in the vicinity of St. Petersburg. Thanks to such activities, he became more and more familiar with local forms and learned to convey them better and better with a brush and pencil. In his first year of study at the Academy, Ivan Ivanovich was already awarded 2 small silver medals for an excellent drawing in which he conveyed the landscape of the outskirts of St. Petersburg. 1858 brings the artist a large silver medal through a view of Valaam. In 1859 Shishkin was awarded a small gold medal for a drawing of a landscape of St. Petersburg. And in 1860, Ivan received a large gold medal for the view of the Cucco area.

Along with the last award, Shishkin also receives the opportunity with which he can travel abroad as a pensioner of the Academy. And so, in 1861, the painter went to Munich. There he visited the workshops of great artists (such as Franz and Benno Adamov, who were very popular among animal painters). In 1863, Ivan moved to Zurich. Here he, under the guidance of Koller, who at that time was considered perhaps the best depicter of animals, wrote from those very animal natures and copied them. It was in Zurich that the landscape artist first tried engraving with “royal vodka”. After Zurich, Ivan's next goal was Geneva, where he became acquainted with the works of Kalam and Dide. From Geneva Shishkin went to Dusseldorf. Here, by order of N. Bykov, he painted a painting called “View in the vicinity of Dusseldorf.” In the future, this same picture was sent to St. Petersburg. And it was with her help that Shishkin received the title of academician. However, Ivan Ivanovich did not only paint abroad, he also drew with a pen. His works of this kind caused great surprise to foreigners. In addition, several such works were placed next to drawings by leading European masters in the Düsseldorf Museum.

Ivan Ivanovich missed his fatherland, so in 1866 he returned to St. Petersburg ahead of schedule. Since that time, he has traveled quite often around Russia for artistic purposes, exhibiting works at the academy almost every year. After the establishment of the Association of Exhibitions, he made pen drawings at such exhibitions. In 1870, Shishkin joined the circle of aquafortists and again engraved with “royal vodka”. Since then, the painter has not neglected this art and devotes exactly the same amount of time as he does to his other activities. Every year, Ivan’s works cemented his reputation as an incomparable aquafortist and, in general, one of the best painters in our country. Shishkin had at his disposal an estate in the village of Vyra (now Leningrad Region, Gatchina District). The year 1873 became very important for the artist - “Forest Wilderness” prompted the Academy to award Shishkin the title of professor. After the adoption of the new academic charter, Shishkin was invited in 1892 as the head of the landscape training workshop, but this position did not lie on his shoulders for long. Ivan Ivanovich died in March 1898, sitting at his easel and working on a new work.

Among the masters of the older generation, I. I. Shishkin represented with his art an exceptional phenomenon, which was not known in the region landscape painting previous eras. Like many Russian artists, he naturally possessed enormous natural talent. No one before Shishkin, with such stunning openness and such disarming intimacy, told the viewer about his love for his native land, for the discreet charm of northern nature.

Shishkin Ivan Ivanovich was born on January 13 (25), 1832 in Elabuga, a small town located on the high bank of the Kama. An impressionable, inquisitive, gifted boy found an irreplaceable friend in his father. A poor merchant, I.V. Shishkin was a man of versatile knowledge. He instilled an interest in antiquity, nature, and reading books in his son, encouraging the boy’s love of drawing, which awoke very early. In 1848, without graduating from the Kazan gymnasium (“so as not to become an official,” as Shishkin explained later), the young man returned to his father’s house, where he languished for the next four years, internally protesting against the limited interests of the overwhelming majority of the inhabitants around him and not yet finding opportunities to determine a future creative path.

Shishkin began systematic studies at the Moscow School of Painting and Sculpture only at the age of twenty, having difficulty overcoming the patriarchal foundations of the family, which opposed (with the exception of his father) his desire to become an artist.

In August 1852, he was already included in the list of students admitted to the Moscow School of Painting and Sculpture, where until January 1856 he studied under the guidance of academician Apollo Mokritsky.

Mokritsky adhered to strict rules of drawing and form construction. But the same academic method presupposed strict adherence to the rules, and not the search for something new. In one of his letters, Mokritsky instructed Shishkin - already a student at the Academy of Arts - about the seemingly opposite: “Work and think more about the subject than about the “method.” This teaching has become firmly established in Shishkin’s work.

At school, Shishkin’s attraction to landscape was immediately apparent. “A landscape painter is a true artist, he feels deeper, purer,” he wrote a little later in his diary. "Nature is always new... and is always ready to give an inexhaustible supply of its gifts, which we call life. What could be better than nature..."

The richness and diversity of plant forms fascinates Shishkin. Constantly studying nature, in which everything seemed interesting to him, be it an old stump, a snag, a dry tree. The artist constantly painted in the forest near Moscow - in Sokolniki, studying the shape of plants, penetrating the anatomy of nature and doing this with great passion. Getting closer to nature was his main goal already at that time. Along with vegetation, he carefully depicted carts, barns, boats or, for example, a walking peasant woman with a knapsack on her back. From the very beginning, drawing became for him the most important means of studying nature.

Among Shishkin's early graphic works, an interesting sheet was executed in 1853, with twenty-nine landscape sketches, most of which are outlined. Shishkin is clearly looking for motifs worthy of the painting. However, all his sketches are extremely simple - a pine tree near the water, a bush on a swampy plain, a river bank. And this already reveals the originality of the artist. His niece A.T. Komarova later said: “Little by little the whole school learned that Shishkin draws views that no one had ever painted before: just a field, a forest, a river, and he makes them look as beautiful as the Swiss ones.” kinds".

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Acquired by the State Russian Museum, still very timid in execution, clearly a student sketch “Pine on a Rock”, dated April 1855, is the only landscape full-scale work in oil paints that has come down to us, dating back to the time of Ivan Shishkin’s studies at the school. It shows that the pencil then obeyed him better than paint.

By the time he graduated from college at the very beginning of 1856, the creative interests of Shishkin, who stood out among his comrades for his outstanding talent, were noticeably defined. As a landscape painter, he had already acquired some professional skills. But the artist strived for further improvement and in January 1856 he went to St. Petersburg to enter the Academy of Arts. From now on creative biography Shishkina is closely connected with the capital, where he lived until the end of his days.

Thanks to the love and care of his leader - A. N. Mokritsky, the first connection art school continued to remain in the thoughts and soul of the aspiring artist for a long time. Accepted without much hassle into the Academy of Arts in the year he graduated from art school, Shishkin at the same time turns more than once to Mokritsky for advice and willingly introduces him into the circle of his activities, successes and difficulties.

At the Academy of Arts, Shishkin quickly stood out among his students for his preparedness and brilliant abilities. Shishkin was attracted by thirst artistic research nature. He focused his attention on fragments of nature, and therefore carefully examined, probed, studied every stem, tree trunk, trembling foliage on the branches, perked grass and soft mosses. Thus it was opened the whole world previously unknown objects, poetic inspirations and delights. The artist discovered a vast world of unremarkable components of nature, previously not included in the circulation of art. Just over three months after admission, he attracted the attention of professors with his full-scale landscape drawings. In 1857, he received two small silver medals - for the painting “In the vicinity of St. Petersburg” (1856) and for drawings executed in the summer in Dubki.

Shishkin's graphic skill can be judged by the drawing "Oak Oaks near Sestroretsk" (1857). Along with the elements of external romanticization of the image inherent in this large “hand-drawn picture”, it also has a feeling of the naturalness of the image. The work shows the artist’s desire for a plastic interpretation of natural forms and good professional training.

Studying at the Academy of Arts with the mediocre painter Socrates Vorobyov added almost nothing to the knowledge acquired at the School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. Academicism, with the passage of time, transforming once living and progressive art into a sclerotic canon, was also inherent Russian Academy, whose life was under heavy pressure from the bureaucratization of artistic education.

During his studies at the Academy of Arts, Shishkin showed symptoms of imitation less than others, but some influences also affected him. This applies primarily to the work of the extremely popular Swiss landscape painter A. Kalam in his time, a shallow artist who lovingly studied Alpine nature and knew how to outwardly poetize it. Copies of Kalam's works were obligatory in the educational practice of not only the Academy, but also the Moscow school. Assessing the influence of A. Kalam on the writing style of the young artist, A. Mokritsky writes to Shishkin in St. Petersburg on March 26, 1860: “I remember. You told me that in the way and manner of drawing your drawings resemble Kalam - I don’t see; in your manner there is something of its own... This shows that there is no need to imitate the manner of one or another master. Manner is the most external side of a work of art and is closely related to the personality of the artist-author and the method and degree of his understanding of the subject and mastery of the technique of art in this regard. The only important thing is for the artist to observe, so to speak, this manner in nature itself, and not to internalize it unconsciously.”

The works of young Shishkin, created during his years studying at the Academy, are noted romantic features, however, this was rather a tribute to the dominant tradition. His sober, calm and thoughtful attitude toward nature became more and more clear. He approached it not only as an artist, passionate about beauty, but also as a researcher studying its forms.

Valaam became a real school for Shishkin, which served as a place for summer work on location for academic landscape painting students. Shishkin was fascinated by the wild, virgin nature of the picturesque and harsh archipelago of the Valaam Islands with its granite rocks, centuries-old pines and spruces. Already the first months spent here were for him serious practice in field work, which contributed to the consolidation and improvement of professional knowledge, a greater understanding of the life of nature in the diversity and interconnection of plant forms.

The sketch “Pine on Valaam” - one of eight awarded a silver medal in 1858 - gives an idea of ​​the passion with which the artist approaches the depiction of nature, and of the characteristic property of Shishkin’s talent that had already begun to manifest itself at that time - a meaningful perception of nature. Carefully drawing out a tall, slender pine tree with a beautiful contour, Shishkin conveys the severity of the surrounding area in a number of characteristic details. One of these details - an old rickety cross leaning against a pine tree - creates a certain elegiac mood.

In nature itself, Shishkin is looking for such motives that would allow it to be revealed in objective significance, and tries to reproduce them at the level of pictorial completeness, which can be clearly judged from another sketch of the same series - “View on the Island of Valaam” (1858) . Conventionality and some decorativeness of the color scheme coexist here with careful elaboration of details, with that close look at nature, which will become distinctive feature Total further creativity masters The artist is captivated not only by the beauty of the view before him, but also by the variety of natural forms. He tried to convey them as specifically as possible. This sketch, rather dry in painting, but indicating good mastery of drawing, formed the basis for Shishkin’s competition painting “View on the island of Valaam. The area of ​​​​Cucco,” which was shown at the academic exhibition in 1860 and awarded the Big Gold Medal. It was previously in the USA, and in 1986 it ended up at an auction in London. Her fate is currently unknown.

Having graduated from the Academy with a Big Gold Medal in 1860, Shishkin received the right to travel abroad as a pensioner.

His path to the stylistic features of his work was far from simple, since his formation as a landscape painter was still affected by a strong connection with the Academy and its aesthetic principles. Outwardly, it continued to persist even after Shishkin’s return from abroad, where he went in 1862 as a pensioner of the Academy. Manifesting itself mainly in his successful performances at the academic exhibition of 1865 with the painting “View in the vicinity of Düsseldorf” (State Russian Museum) and later, in 1867, with the same work at the Paris World Exhibition, and a year later again at the academic exhibition, Shishkin outwardly he finds himself in the sight of the academic authorities and is even awarded the Order of Stanislav, III degree.

But the skill accumulated at the Academy and abroad did little to guide the artist in choosing his own further path, a choice all the more responsible for Shishkin and his original talent not only to himself, but also to his closest comrades, who felt in him a landscape artist walking along a new road. The rapprochement with the members of the Artel and especially with I. N. Kramskoy could also have a beneficial effect on the urgent search for creative restructuring.

The situation in which Shishkin found himself in the second half of the sixties upon returning from abroad could be observed in the creative lives of other landscape painters. Awareness of the importance of new tasks outstripped the possibilities of solving them. The era of the 60s itself put forward fundamentally new important tasks for art and the artist, and life at every step opened up a rich, complex world phenomena that required a radical overhaul of the conventional and impoverished methods of the academic system of painting, devoid of a living relationship to nature and a sense of artistic truth.

The first signs of internal dissatisfaction with his position, and perhaps even with the established painting method, appeared very clearly in Shishkin already in next year upon returning from abroad. He spent the summer of 1866 in Moscow and worked in Bratsevo together with L. L. Kamenev, his friend at the Moscow School of Painting and Sculpture. Collaboration with a landscape painter of the Moscow school, sincerely fascinated by the motifs of the flat Russian landscape, does not pass without a trace. In addition to Shishkin’s light-colored drawings with the signature “Bratsevo” that have come down to us, free from the constraint of his academic manner, the main thing, of course, were the pictorial sketches he executed, in one of which the motif of a ripening rye field and road was captured, which later served as basis for the painting "Noon. In the vicinity of Moscow" (State Tretyakov Gallery), with golden fields ripe rye, specifically inscribed distant plans, a road coming from the depths, and a high sky stretched above the earth with bright cumulus clouds. The presence of the painting in no way detracts from the independent artistic value of the sketch, executed on location, with a particularly successful painting of the sky with silvery clouds at the edges, illuminated from the depths by the sun.

Representing a typical Central Russian flat landscape, the picture at the same time reveals in its content a theme figuratively expressed through the landscape folk life. Completing the sixties and the path of perestroika, it simultaneously becomes a statement for the artist’s future work, although mostly devoted to the motifs of a forest landscape, but in the essence of its imagery close to the same healthy folk basis.

In 1867, the artist again went to the legendary Valaam. Shishkin went to Valaam with seventeen-year-old Fyodor Vasilyev, whom he took care of and taught painting.

The epic of the Russian forest, an inevitable and essential part of Russian nature, began in Shishkin’s work, essentially, with the painting “Cutting the Forest” (1867).

To define the “face” of the landscape, Shishkin chose a coniferous forest, most typical of the northern regions of Russia. Shishkin strove to depict the forest in a “scientific way” so that the type of trees could be guessed. But this seemingly protocol recording contained its own poetry of the endless uniqueness of the life of a tree. In “Cutting Wood” this is evident from the elastic roundness of the cut spruce, which seems like a slender antique column crushed by barbarians. The slender pine trees on the left side of the picture are tactfully painted with the light of the fading day. The artist’s favorite subject plan with ferns, lush grass, damp earth torn by rhizomes, an animal in the foreground and a fly agaric, contrasting with the solemn and echoing forest - all this inspires a feeling of rapture with the beauty of the material life of nature, the energy of forest growth. The compositional structure of the picture is devoid of staticity - the verticals of the forest intersect, are cut diagonally by a stream, fallen spruce trees and tilted aspen and birch trees growing “at odds”.

In the summer of 1868, Shishkin left for his homeland, Elabuga, to receive his father’s blessing for his wedding to Evgenia Alexandrovna Vasilyeva, the artist’s sister.

In September of the same year, Shishkin submitted two landscapes to the Academy of Arts, hoping to receive the title of professor. Instead, the artist was presented to the order, which, apparently, was annoyed.

The theme of the Russian forest after the felling of the forest continued and did not dry out until the end of the artist’s life. In the summer of 1869, Shishkin worked on several paintings in preparation for an academic exhibition. The painting "Noon. In the vicinity of Moscow" stood out from the general order. In September-October 1869 it was exhibited at an academic exhibition and, apparently, was not acquired. Therefore, Pavel Tretyakov, in a letter to the artist, asked him to leave the painting behind him. Shishkin gratefully agreed to give it to the collection for 300 rubles - the amount offered by Tretyakov.

In the painting “Noon. In the vicinity of Moscow,” a theme was voiced that covered not only Shishkin’s work, but also a significant part of Russian landscape painting. The theme of thanksgiving, the perception of life as a blessing, which has an implicit Christian source. The idea of ​​good became one of the central problems of philosophy and art of the second half of the 19th century century. Mikhail Bakunin also spoke about him (“... there is no evil, everything is good. For a religious person... everything is good and beautiful...”

Starting from the 1st Traveling Exhibition, throughout the entire twenty-five years, Shishkin participated in exhibitions with his paintings, which today make it possible to judge the evolution of the landscape painter’s skill.

Shishkin's works show how his creative tasks and how this true democratic artist wanted to express in the images of Russian nature the best popular ideals and aspirations, for the implementation of which representatives of all advanced democratic culture were fighting at that time.

Shishkin spent the summer of 1871 in his homeland. At the beginning of 1872, at a competition organized by the Society for the Encouragement of Arts in St. Petersburg, Shishkin presented the painting “Mast Forest in the Vyatka Province.” The title itself allows us to connect this work with nature. native land, and the time of collecting the material is from the summer of 1871.

Shishkin's painting was acquired by P. M. Tretyakov and became part of his gallery. Kramskoy, in a letter dated April 10, 1872, notifying Tretyakov about the shipment of paintings, calls Shishkin’s painting “the most remarkable work of the Russian school.” In a letter to Vasiliev, Kramskoy speaks even more enthusiastically about the same painting. “He (that is, Shishkin), writes Kramskoy, “wrote a good thing to such an extent that, while still remaining himself, he has not yet done anything equal to the real thing. This is an extremely characteristic work of our landscape painting.”

Having become one of the founders of the Association of Traveling Art Exhibitions, Shishkin became friends with Konstantin Savitsky, Ivan Kramskoy, and later - in the 1870s - with Arkhip Kuindzhi.

The creative life of Ivan Shishkin for a long number of years (especially in the 70s) took place before Kramskoy’s eyes. Usually, from year to year, both artists settled together during the summer, somewhere among the nature of central Russia. Apparently indebted to Kramskoy’s participation, Shishkin openly called him the artist who had a beneficial influence on him. Kramskoy, seeing the steady creative growth of the landscape painter since the early 70s, was especially pleased with his success in the field of color, emphasizing that this victory was won primarily in the field of sketching, that is, in direct communication with nature.

In 1872, in letters to Vasiliev from near Luga (where Kramskoy and Shishkin lived together), Kramskoy often wrote about studying sketches. “It’s better, instead of reasoning, I’ll tell you what we’re doing here,” he writes to Vasiliev on August 20. “Firstly, Shishkin is getting younger, that is, growing. Seriously... And the sketches, I’ll tell you - just anywhere , and as I wrote to you, it is improving in color.”

At the same time, Kramskoy, with his characteristic depth and breadth of views on art, immediately felt a healthy basis and strengths Shishkin's creativity and his enormous possibilities. Already in 1872, in a letter to Vasiliev, Kramskoy, noting with stern impartiality some of the limitations inherent in Shishkin’s work in those years, determined the place and significance of this artist for Russian art: “... he is still immeasurably higher than all of them taken together, up to until now... Shishkin is a milestone in the development of Russian landscape, he is a man - a school, but a living school.”

In April 1874, Shishkin’s first wife, Evgenia Alexandrovna (sister of Fyodor Alexandrovich Vasilyev), died, and after her little son. Under the weight of personal experiences, Shishkin sank for some time, moved away from Kramskoy and quit working. He settled in the village, again became friends with classmates at the Moscow School of Painting and Sculpture and the Academy of Arts, who often drank with him. Shishkin's powerful nature overcame difficult emotional experiences, and already in 1875, at the 4th Traveling Exhibition, Shishkin was able to give a number of paintings, one of which ("Spring in a Pine Forest") again evoked enthusiastic praise from Kramskoy.

In the seventies, Shishkin became increasingly interested in etching. The intaglio printing technique, which allows him to draw freely without any physical effort, turned out to be especially close to him - he could maintain a free and lively style of line drawing. While many artists used etching to reproduce their paintings, for Shishkin the art of etching became an independent and important area of ​​creativity. Stylistically close to him paintings, the artist’s lush prints are distinguished by their expressive figurative structure and amazing subtlety of execution.

Shishkin produced prints either in separate sheets or in whole series, which he combined into albums that were used great success. The master boldly experimented. He not only crossed out the drawing with a needle, but also drew on the board with paint, put new shadows, sometimes additionally etched the finished image, strengthened or weakened the intensity of the entire etching or individual places. He often refined the printing form with a dry point, applying a design to a metal board even after etching and adding new details to the image. A large number of test prints made by the artist are known.

Already one of Shishkin’s early etchings, “A Stream in the Forest” (1870), testifies to the strength of the engraver’s professional foundation, behind which stands intense study and creative work. Busy and complex in motif, this etching is reminiscent of the pen and ink drawings that Shishkin performed in the sixties. But in comparison with them, with all the fineness of the strokes, it is devoid of any dryness, the beauty of the chased lines is felt more in it, the light and shadow contrasts are richer.

In some works the artist achieves a high poetic generalization while maintaining the same care in conveying details. For the seventies, such a picture was “Rye” (1878).

On March 9, 1878, the doors of the Society for the Encouragement of the Arts opened. Here at that time the sixth exhibition of the Itinerants was located, which displayed such outstanding paintings as “Protodeacon” by I. E. Repin, “Stoker” and “Prisoner” by N. A. Yaroshenko, “Meeting of the Icon” by K. A. Savitsky, “ Evening in Ukraine" by A. I. Kuindzhi. And even among them, Shishkin’s landscape “Rye” stood out. He was not inferior to them in the significance of the content and in the level of execution. Kramskoy informed Repin: “I will speak in the order in which (in my opinion) things are arranged at the exhibition according to their inner dignity. Shishkin’s “Rye” takes first place.

The painting was painted after the artist’s trip to Yelabuga in 1877. Throughout his life, he constantly came to his father’s land, where he seemed to draw new creative strength. The motif found in the homeland, captured in one of the pencil sketches with the author’s laconic inscription: “This,” formed the basis of the painting.

The very name “Rye” to a certain extent expresses the essence of what is depicted, where everything is so wisely simple, and at the same time significant. This work is involuntarily associated with the poems of A.V. Koltsov and N.A. Nekrasov - two poets whom Shishkin especially loved.

All the rye around is like a living steppe,

No castles, no seas, no mountains.

Thank you, dear side,

For your healing space.

This is what Nekrasov wrote after returning from abroad in the poem “Silence.”

Ripe rye, filling the picture with a golden tint, with ears rustling and swaying in the wind, spilled around like an endless sea. It’s as if a field path is running forward from under the viewer’s feet, twisting and hiding behind a wall of rye. The motif of the road, as if symbolizing the difficult and sorrowful path of the people among accusatory artists, takes on a completely different, joyful sound in Shishkin. This is a bright, “hospitable” road, calling and beckoning into the distance.

Shishkin’s life-affirming work is in tune with the worldview of the people, who associate the idea of ​​“happiness, contentment” with the power and wealth of nature human life". It is not without reason that on one of the artist’s sketches we find the following entry: “Expansion, space, land. Rye. God's Grace. Russian wealth." This later author's remark reveals the essence of the created image.

The painting “Rye” completed the conquests of Shishkin, an epic landscape painter, in the seventies. In the context of Russian landscape painting of the second half of the 19th century, the painting has the significance of a milestone work, which best expressed in that period the path of the Itinerant landscape, in which a specific national image of Russian nature acquired special social significance. Ripe in art critical realism The problem of establishing positive ideals found the most complete solution in this genre in the film “Rye.”

In the seventies years go by the rapid process of development of landscape painting, enriching it with new talents. Next to Shishkin, he exhibits his eight at five traveling exhibitions. famous paintings A.I. Kuindzhi, developing a completely unusual painting system. The artistic images created by Shishkin and Kuindzhi, their creative methods, the techniques, as well as the teaching system subsequently, were sharply different, which did not detract from the dignity of each of them. While Shishkin was characterized by a calm contemplation of nature in all the ordinariness of its manifestations, Kuindzhi was characterized by a romantic perception of it; he was fascinated mainly by the effects of lighting and the color contrasts caused by them. Colorful richness and bold generalizations of forms allowed him to achieve particular persuasiveness in solving the complex task of getting as close as possible to reality. existing force colors in nature and determined the decorative elements inherent in his works. In solving color problems, Shishkin was inferior to Kuindzhi, but he was stronger than him as a draftsman. It is characteristic that Kuindzhi, who, as a rule, depicted natural phenomena that were not amenable to long-term study, did without preliminary sketches from nature, while Shishkin considered them the fundamental basis of the creative process.

Along with Kuindzhi, at the end of the seventies, V.D. Polenov, the author of the wonderful plein air genre-landscape paintings “Moscow Courtyard” and “Grandmother’s Garden,” appeared. In 1879, after a three-year break, for the penultimate time he exhibited two landscapes by Savrasov, in whose work features were outlined that foreshadowed the approaching decline. And at the Moscow student exhibition of 1879/80, a fine painting appeared lyrical picture young I. I. Levitan, who studied in Savrasov’s class, “Autumn Day. Sokolniki.”

All these works represented different directions within the unified framework of Russian realistic landscape. Each of them aroused the interest of the audience. And yet the greatest success fell to Shishkin, who at the end of the seventies occupied one of the most prominent places, if not the main one, among Russian landscape painters. In the new decade, when A. I. Kuindzhi and A. K. Savrasov stopped exhibiting, and M. K. Klodt and L. L. Kamenev did not achieve this artistic level, like Shishkin, the latter, together with V.D. Polenov, headed the Peredvizhniki school of landscape. In his best works realistic landscape painting rises to one of the highest levels.

In the 80s, Shishkin created many paintings, in the subjects of which he still turned mainly to the life of the Russian forest, Russian meadows and fields, however, also touching on such motifs as the Baltic sea coast. The main features of his art are preserved even now, but the artist by no means remains motionless in the creative positions developed by the end of the seventies. Such canvases as “A Stream in the Forest (On a Slope”) (1880), “Reserve. Pinery"(1881), "Pine Forest" (1885), "In a Pine Forest" (1887) and others are similar in nature to the works of the previous decade. However, they are interpreted with greater pictorial freedom. In the best landscapes Shishkin of this time reflects the trends common to Russian fine art, which he refracts in his own way. The artist enthusiastically works on paintings that are wide in scope, epic in their structure, glorifying the open spaces native land. Now his desire to convey the state of nature, the expression of images, and the purity of the palette is becoming more and more noticeable. In many works, tracing color and light gradations, he uses the principles of tonal painting.

Advances in color were achieved by Shishkin first of all and to the greatest extent in sketches, in the process direct communication with nature. It is no coincidence that Shishkin’s friends, the Itinerant artists, found his sketches no less interesting than his paintings, and sometimes even more fresh and colorful. Meanwhile, apart from “Pines illuminated by the sun” and the richly painted, extremely expressive landscape “Oaks. Evening”, many of Shishkin’s excellent sketches from the best period of his work are almost not mentioned in art history literature. These include “A Corner of an Overgrown Garden. Dry Grass” (1884), “Forest (Shmetsk near Narva)”, “On the Shores of the Gulf of Finland (Udrias near Narva)” (both 1888), “On Sandy Ground. Hovi in ​​Finnish railway" (1889, 90?), "Young pines near a sandy cliff. Mary-Hovi on the Finnish Railway" (1890) and a number of others. All of them are distinguished by a keen sense of the form and texture of objects, a subtle gradation of nearby shades of color, freedom and variety of painting techniques while maintaining a strict, realistically accurate drawing. By the way, the latter is with all The study of Shishkin’s works in infrared light clearly reveals the clear drawing underlying the artist’s works is an essential feature that makes it possible to distinguish the master’s authentic works.

Shishkin’s numerous sketches, on which he worked especially enthusiastically during his creative heyday, testify to his sensitivity to the development trends of Russian art last decades XIX century, when interest in works of a sketch nature as a special pictorial form intensified.

In 1885, V.D. Polenov exhibited ninety-seven sketches brought from a trip to the East at a traveling exhibition. Shishkin first performed with a group of sketches in 1880, showing twelve Crimean landscapes. Over the following years, he repeatedly demonstrated sketches, which he treated as independent, complete ones. works of art. And the fact that Shishkin showed not paintings, but sketches at his personal exhibitions, allows us to judge how fundamentally important this area of ​​artistic activity was for him.

Some of Shishkin's sketches were acquired by P. M. Tretyakov soon after their completion. These include the landscape "Apiary" (1882) with blue cloudy sky and beautifully designed dark greens. It is much more picturesque compared to the 1876 painting “Apiary in the Forest,” which is similar in motif. The artist brought the beehives and the thatched barn closer to the viewer, shortened detailed story and achieved high capacity and integrity artistic image.

In the eighties and nineties, the artist was increasingly attracted by the changing states of nature and quickly passing moments. Thanks to his interest in the light-air environment and color, he is now more successful than before in this kind of work. An example of this is the painting “Foggy Morning” (1885), poetic in motif and harmonious in painting. As was often the case with an artist, the motif that fascinated him varies in several works. In 1888, Shishkin wrote "Fog in a Pine Forest" and then, apparently, the sketch "Krestovsky Island in the Fog", in 1889 - "Morning in a Pine Forest" and "Fog", in 1890 - again "Fog" and, finally, “Foggy Morning” (a landscape exhibited at the twenty-fifth traveling exhibition).

Among all the artist’s works, the painting “Morning in a Pine Forest” is the most widely known. Its idea was suggested to Shishkin by K. A. Savitsky, but the possibility cannot be ruled out that the impetus for the appearance of this canvas was the 1888 landscape “Fog in a Pine Forest,” painted, in all likelihood, like “Windfall,” after a trip to the Vologda forests. Apparently, “Fog in a Pine Forest,” which was successfully exhibited at a traveling exhibition in Moscow (now in a private collection in Czechoslovakia), gave rise to a mutual desire among Shishkin and Savitsky to paint a landscape with a similar motif, including a unique genre scene with frolicking bears. After all, the leitmotif of the famous painting of 1889 is precisely the fog in a pine forest. Judging by the description of the landscape that ended up in Czechoslovakia, its background with a plot dense forest resembles a distant view of an oil sketch of the painting “Morning in a Pine Forest”, owned by the State Tretyakov Gallery. And this once again confirms the possibility of interconnection between both paintings. Apparently, according to Shishkin’s sketch (that is, the way they were conceived by the landscape painter), Savitsky painted the bears in the picture itself. These bears, with some differences in poses and in number (at first there were two of them), appear in all of Shishkin’s preparatory sketches and sketches. And there were a lot of them. The State Russian Museum alone houses seven pencil sketches-variants. Savitsky turned out the bears so well that he even signed the picture together with Shishkin. However, P. M. Tretyakov, who acquired it, removed the signature, deciding to approve only the authorship of Shishkin for this painting. After all, in it “from the concept to the execution, everything speaks about the manner of painting, about the creative method that is characteristic of Shishkin.”

The entertaining genre motif introduced into the film largely contributed to its popularity, but true value The work was a beautifully expressed state of nature. It's not just deaf Pine forest, namely, the morning in the forest with its fog that has not yet dissipated, with the lightly pinked tops of huge pines, cold shadows in the thickets. You can feel the depth of the ravine, the wilderness. The presence of a bear family located on the edge of this ravine gives the viewer a feeling of remoteness and deafness of the wild forest.

At the turn of the eighties and nineties, Shishkin turned to the relatively rare topic of winter torpor of nature for him and wrote big picture"Winter" (1890), posing in it the difficult task of conveying barely noticeable reflexes and almost monochrome painting. Everything is frozen and immersed in shadow. Only in the depths a ray of sun illuminated the clearing, slightly coloring it in a pinkish tone. This makes the snow, lying in a thick layer on the ground, seem even bluer on the branches of the pine trees. Only the powerful trunks of huge trees darkening against its background and a bird on a branch bring a sense of life.

And in the nineties, during a difficult period for the Association of Traveling Art Exhibitions, marked by crises in the work of many artists of the older generation and disagreements arising among the Wanderers, threatening the collapse of the entire organization, Shishkin remained with those who remained faithful to the democratic ideals of the sixties. A follower of Kramskoy, a staunch supporter of the educational, ideological and artistic program of the Peredvizhniki, who actively participated with his creativity in its implementation, he proudly wrote in 1896: “It is pleasant to remember the time when we, as newcomers, took the first timid steps for a traveling exhibition And from these timid, but firmly outlined steps, a whole path and a glorious path developed, a path that one can safely be proud of. The idea, organization, meaning, purpose and aspirations of the Partnership created for it an honorable place, if not the main one, in the environment of Russian art.

On the eve of the 20th century, when various movements and trends emerged, and new artistic styles, forms and techniques were being searched for, Shishkin continued to confidently follow his once chosen path, creating life-true, meaningful and typical images of Russian nature. A worthy completion of his integral and original creativity was the painting " Ship Grove" (1898) - a classic canvas in its completeness and versatility of artistic image, perfection of composition.

This landscape is based on natural studies made by Shishkin in his native Kama forests, where he found his ideal - a synthesis of harmony and greatness. But the work also embodies the deepest knowledge of Russian nature that was accumulated by the master over almost half a century of creative life. The sketch version, stored in the State Russian Museum, has the author’s inscription: “Ship Afonasovskaya Grove near Yelabuga.” The fact that the artist, when creating the picture, was based on living, concrete impressions, gives it special persuasiveness. In the center, powerful trunks of centuries-old pine trees illuminated by the sun are highlighted. Thick crowns cast a shadow on them. In the distance - the space of the forest, permeated with warm light, as if beckoning to itself. By cutting off the tops of trees with a frame (a technique often found in Shishkin), he enhances the impression of the enormity of the trees, which seem to not have enough space on the canvas. Magnificent slender pines are presented in all their plastic beauty. Their scaly bark is painted using many colors. Shishkin was and remained to the end an unsurpassed connoisseur of wood, an artist who had no rivals in depicting coniferous forests.

As always, he slowly talks about the life of this forest on a fine summer day. Emerald grass and grayish green milkweed descend to a shallow stream running over rocks and sand. A fence thrown across it indicates the close presence of a person. Two yellow butterflies fluttering over the water, greenish reflections in it, slightly bluish reflections from the sky, sliding lilac shadows on the trunks bring the tremulous joy of being, without disturbing the impression of peace diffused in nature. The clearing on the right with sun-brown grass, dry soil and richly colored young growth is beautifully painted. Varied strokes that reveal the shape and texture emphasize the softness of the grass, the fluffiness of the needles, and the strength of the trunks. Richly nuanced color. You can feel the honed craftsmanship and the confident hand of the artist in everything.

The painting “Ship Grove” (the largest in size in Shishkin’s work) is, as it were, the last, final image in the epic he created, symbolizing the heroic Russian strength. The implementation of such a monumental plan as this work indicates that the sixty-six-year-old artist was in full bloom of his creative powers, but this was where his path in art ended. On March 8 (20), 1898, he died in his studio at the easel, on which stood a new, just begun painting, “The Forest Kingdom.”

Together with a group of indigenous Itinerants - the founders and leaders of the Partnership - Shishkin traveled a long and glorious path. But in the fine arts of the end XIX century a different alignment of artistic forces was observed than before. In the work of young painters there was a growing desire for new media. artistic expression, the search for other imaginative solutions intensified. It was then that among some older artists, obvious intolerance began to be revealed towards those representatives of the new generation who tried to move away from the established traditions of the Wanderers. In this departure, some older Itinerants saw not the natural desire for young people to search for new solutions, to continuously move forward, but a retreat from the glorious achievements of the previous generation in its difficult struggle with obsolete academicism. Having been innovators themselves in the past, they now did not recognize the innovation of talented youth. But the perception by artists of the older generation of the work of the young is the touchstone on which an understanding of the ways of development of art is revealed.

Shishkin, like Repin, with whom in 1894 he began teaching at the Higher art school at the Academy of Arts, knew how to appreciate talent. It is significant in this case that he was the first and the best artist named V. A. Serov, the greatest portrait painter who made an invaluable contribution to the development of Russian landscape, who found new, subtle means of artistic expression in the depiction of modest Russian nature.

Among young artists, Shishkin enjoyed well-deserved respect, despite the fact that he professed different aesthetic principles and adhered to a different artistic system. Young people could not help but recognize in him the deepest connoisseur and thoughtful depicter of Russian nature, and could not help but appreciate his high skill. Shishkin’s sketches, drawings, and etchings were that visual “living school” that Kramskoy spoke about in his time. This same school for aspiring artists, of course, was Shishkin himself, his experience, his knowledge, his direct lessons with them.

Shishkin himself later years, remaining faithful to his principles and the manner developed over the years, carefully looked at the works of young people, and tried to introduce something new into his own creativity, despite the fact that in the complex, contradictory artistic life of the eve of the 20th century, he invariably remained a prominent representative of the art of critical realism, an exponent of democratic ideals , bearer of the best traditions of Wandering.

“If pictures of nature of our dear and sweet Rus' are dear to us,” V.M. Vasnetsov wrote to Shishkin in 1896, “If we want to find our true folk ways to the image of her clear, quiet and sincere appearance, then these paths also lie through your resinous forests, full of quiet poetry. Your roots are so deeply and firmly rooted in the soil of your native art that no one can ever uproot them from there.”

Today, the work of Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin captivates us with the wisdom of his worldview, devoid of at least some hint of fussiness and compromise.

His innovation is in sustainability, purity of traditions, in the primacy and integrity of the sense of the living world, in his love and admiration for nature.

Not slavish following and copying, but the deepest penetration into the soul of the landscape, the faithful tuning fork of a mighty song once taken - this is what is characteristic of the epic style of Shishkin’s work.

“A landscape painter is a true artist, he feels deeper, purer... Nature is always new... and is always ready to give with an inexhaustible supply of its gifts, which we call life. What could be better than nature...” - Shishkin I.I.

Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin is not only one of the largest, but also perhaps the most popular among Russian landscape painters. Shishkin knew Russian nature “scientifically” (I.N. Kramskoy) and loved it with all the strength of his powerful nature. From this knowledge and this love, images were born that have long become unique symbols of Russia. Already the figure of Shishkin personified Russian nature for his contemporaries. He was called the “forest hero-artist”, “king of the forest”, “old forest man”, he could be compared to “an old strong pine tree overgrown with moss”, but, rather, he is like a lonely oak tree from his famous painting, despite many fans , disciples and imitators.
Among the masters of the older generation, I.I. Shishkin represented with his art an exceptional phenomenon, which was not known in the field of landscape painting in previous eras. Like many Russian artists, he naturally possessed enormous natural talent.
Shishkin was born on January 13 (25), 1832 in Elabuga, a small provincial town located on the high bank of the Kama. An impressionable, inquisitive, gifted boy found an irreplaceable friend in his father. A poor merchant, I.V. Shishkin was a man of versatile knowledge. He instilled an interest in antiquity, nature, and reading books in his son, encouraging the boy’s love of drawing, which awoke very early.

Self-portrait 1854. Paper, graphite. pencil

In 1848, having shown a certain independence and without graduating from the Kazan gymnasium, the young man returned to his father’s house.
Shishkin began systematic studies at the Moscow School of Painting and Sculpture only at the age of twenty, having difficulty overcoming the patriarchal foundations of the family, which opposed (with the exception of his father) his desire to become an artist.

In August 1852, he was already included in the list of students admitted to the Moscow School of Painting and Sculpture, where until January 1856 he studied under the guidance of Apollo Mokritsky. Being an academician, Mokritsky adhered to strict rules of drawing and form construction, that is, what his young student firmly internalized throughout his life. But the same academic method presupposed strict adherence to the rules, and not the search for something new.

A Walk in the Woods 1869

At school, Shishkin’s attraction to landscape was immediately apparent. The richness and diversity of plant forms fascinates Shishkin. Constantly studying nature, in which everything seemed interesting to him, be it an old stump, a snag, a dry tree. The artist constantly painted in the forest near Moscow - in Sokolniki, studying the shape of plants, penetrating the anatomy of nature and doing this with great passion.

By the time he graduated from college at the very beginning of 1856, the creative interests of Shishkin, who stood out among his comrades for his outstanding talent, were noticeably defined. As a landscape painter, he had already acquired some professional skills.

But the artist strived for further improvement and in January 1856 he went to St. Petersburg to enter the Academy of Arts. From then on, Shishkin’s creative biography was closely connected with the capital, where he lived until the end of his days.

Alley summer garden in St. Petersburg 1869

At the Academy of Arts, Shishkin quickly stood out among his students for his preparedness and brilliant abilities. Shishkin focused his attention on fragments of nature, and therefore carefully examined, probed, studied every stem, tree trunk, trembling foliage on the branches, perked grass and soft mosses.

Birch Grove 1880-1890

The inspiration of the natural scientist guided the artist’s brush. The artist discovered a vast world of unremarkable components of nature, previously not included in the circulation of art. Just over three months after admission, he attracted the attention of professors with his full-scale landscape drawings. In 1857, he received two small silver medals - for the painting “In the vicinity of St. Petersburg” (1856) and for drawings executed in the summer in Dubki.

"In the vicinity of St. Petersburg" (1856)

During his studies at the Academy of Arts, Shishkin showed symptoms of imitation less than others, but some influences also affected him. This applies primarily to the work of the extremely popular Swiss landscape painter A. Kalam in his time, a shallow artist who lovingly studied Alpine nature and knew how to outwardly poetize it.

In the grove 1869

The works of the young Shishkin, created during his years of study at the Academy, are marked by romantic features, but this was rather a tribute to the dominant tradition.

I.I.Shishkin and A.V.Gine in a workshop on the island of Valaam

Valaam became a real school for Shishkin, which served as a place for summer work on location for academic landscape painting students. Shishkin was fascinated by the wild, virgin nature of the picturesque and harsh archipelago of the Valaam Islands with its granite rocks, centuries-old pines and spruces.

Forest in the evening. 1869.

The study "Pine on Valaam" - one of eight awarded a silver medal in 1858 - gives an idea of ​​the passion with which the artist approaches the depiction of nature.
In nature itself, Shishkin is looking for such motives that would allow it to be revealed in objective significance, and tries to reproduce them at the level of pictorial completeness, which can be clearly judged from another sketch of the same series - “View on the Island of Valaam” (1858) .

This sketch, rather dry in painting, but indicating good mastery of drawing, formed the basis for Shishkin’s competition painting “View on the island of Valaam. The area of ​​​​Cucco,” which was shown at the academic exhibition in 1860 and awarded the Big Gold Medal.

"View on the island of Valaam. Kukko area"

Having graduated from the Academy with a Big Gold Medal in 1860, Shishkin received the right to travel abroad as a pensioner.

Dresden. Augustus Bridge

The first signs of internal dissatisfaction with his position, and perhaps even with the established painting method, appeared very clearly in Shishkin the following year upon his return from abroad.

Italian boy

Beech forest in Switzerland 1863

He spent the summer of 1866 in Moscow and worked in Bratsevo together with L.L. Kamenev, his friend at the Moscow School of Painting and Sculpture.

Ferns in the forest. Siverskaya 1883

Collaboration with a landscape painter from the Moscow school, who is sincerely fascinated by the motifs of the flat Russian landscape, does not pass without a trace. In addition to Shishkin’s light-colored drawings with the signature “Bratsevo” that have come down to us, free from the constraint of his academic manner, the main thing, of course, were the pictorial sketches he executed, in one of which the motif of a ripening rye field and road was captured, which later served as the basis for the painting “Noon. In the vicinity of Moscow” (State Tretyakov Gallery), with golden fields of ripening rye, specifically inscribed distant plans, a road coming from the depths, and a high sky spread above the ground with light cumulus clouds.

Landscape with a hunter. Valaam Island 1867

In 1867, the artist again went to the legendary Valaam. Shishkin went to Valaam with seventeen-year-old Fyodor Vasilyev, whom he took care of and taught painting.
The epic of the Russian forest, an inevitable and essential part of Russian nature, began in Shishkin’s work, essentially, with the painting “Cutting the Forest” (1867).

"Cutting Wood" (1867)

In the summer of 1868, Shishkin left for his homeland, Elabuga, to receive his father’s blessing for his wedding to Evgenia Alexandrovna Vasilyeva, the artist’s sister.
In September of the same year, Shishkin submitted two landscapes to the Academy of Arts, hoping to receive the title of professor. Instead, the artist was presented to the order, which, apparently, was annoyed.

The theme of the Russian forest after “Cutting the Forest” continued and did not dry out until the end of the artist’s life. In the summer of 1869, Shishkin worked on several paintings in preparation for an academic exhibition. The painting "Noon. In the vicinity of Moscow" stood out from the general order.

I. I. Shishkin. "Noon. In the vicinity of Moscow." 1869. Tretyakov Gallery. Moscow.

In September-October 1869 it was exhibited at an academic exhibition and, apparently, was not acquired. Therefore, Pavel Tretyakov, in a letter to the artist, asked him to leave the painting behind him. Shishkin gratefully agreed to give it to the collection for 300 rubles - the amount offered by Tretyakov.

Forest landscape with herons 1870

Starting from the 1st Traveling Exhibition, throughout the entire twenty-five years, Shishkin participated in exhibitions with his paintings, which today make it possible to judge the evolution of the landscape painter’s skill.
Shishkin spent the summer of 1871 in his homeland. At the beginning of 1872, at a competition organized by the Society for the Encouragement of Arts in St. Petersburg, Shishkin presented the painting “Mast Forest in the Vyatka Province.” The title itself allows us to connect this work with the nature of our native land, and the time of collecting the material - with the summer of 1871.

"Mast forest in Vyatka province"

Shishkin's painting was acquired by P.M. Tretyakov and became part of his gallery. Kramskoy, in a letter dated April 10, 1872, notifying Tretyakov about the shipment of paintings, calls Shishkin’s painting “the most remarkable work of the Russian school.” Having become one of the founders of the Association of Traveling Art Exhibitions, Shishkin became friends with Konstantin Savitsky, Ivan Kramskoy, and later - in the 1870s - with Arkhip Kuindzhi.

Portrait of I.I. Shishkin. Kramskoy I.N.

The creative life of Ivan Shishkin for a long number of years (especially in the 70s) took place before Kramskoy’s eyes. Usually, from year to year, both artists settled together during the summer, somewhere among the nature of central Russia.

Annunciation Cathedral and gymnasium on Blagoveshchenskaya Square in Nizhny Novgorod 1870

First snow. 1875

In April 1874, Shishkin's first wife, Evgenia Alexandrovna (sister of Fyodor Alexandrovich Vasiliev), died, followed by her little son. Under the weight of personal experiences, Shishkin sank for some time, moved away from Kramskoy and quit working.

Before the Storm 1884

He settled in the village, again became friends with classmates at the Moscow School of Painting and Sculpture and the Academy of Arts, who often drank with him. Shishkin's powerful nature overcame difficult emotional experiences, and already in 1875, at the 4th Traveling Exhibition, Shishkin was able to give a number of paintings, one of which ("Spring in a Pine Forest") again evoked enthusiastic praise from Kramskoy.

Swiss landscape 1866

In the seventies, Shishkin became increasingly interested in etching. The intaglio printing technique, which allows him to draw freely without any physical effort, turned out to be especially close to him - he could maintain a free and lively style of line drawing.

At the church fence. Valaam 1867

While many artists used etching to reproduce their paintings, for Shishkin the art of etching became an independent and important area of ​​creativity.

Myasoedov Grigory. First print. Portrait of I.I. Shishkina

In some works the artist achieves a high poetic generalization while maintaining the same care in conveying details. For the seventies, such a picture was “Rye” (1878). The painting was painted after the artist’s trip to Yelabuga in 1877. Throughout his life, he constantly came to his father’s land, where he seemed to draw new creative strength. The very name “Rye” to a certain extent expresses the essence of what is depicted, where everything is so wisely simple, and at the same time significant. This work is involuntarily associated with the poems of A.V. Koltsov and N.A. Nekrasov - two poets whom Shishkin especially loved.

The painting “Rye” completed the conquests of Shishkin, an epic landscape painter, in the seventies.
In the seventies, there was a rapid process of development of landscape painting, enriching it with new talents. Next to Shishkin, A.I. Kuindzhi, who is developing a completely unusual painting system, exhibits his eight famous paintings at five traveling exhibitions.

The artistic images created by Shishkin and Kuindzhi, their creative methods, techniques, as well as subsequently the teaching system, were sharply different, which did not detract from the dignity of each of them. While Shishkin was characterized by a calm contemplation of nature in all the ordinariness of its manifestations, Kuindzhi was characterized by a romantic perception of it; he was fascinated mainly by the effects of lighting and the color contrasts caused by them.
In the 80s, Shishkin created many paintings, in the subjects of which he still turned mainly to the life of the Russian forest, Russian meadows and fields, however, also touching on such motifs as the Baltic sea coast. The main features of his art are preserved even now, but the artist by no means remains motionless in the creative positions developed by the end of the seventies.

Such canvases as “A Stream in the Forest (On a Slope”) (1880),

"Reserve. Pine Forest" (1881),

"Pine Forest" (1885),

Oak Grove 1887

and others are similar in nature to the works of the previous decade. However, they are interpreted with greater pictorial freedom.

Self-portrait 1886

Shishkin pays serious attention to the textural design of his works, skillfully combining underpainting with the use of glaze and body paints, and diversifying the strokes applied with various brushes. His form modeling becomes extremely accurate and confident.

Two female figures 1880s

Advances in color were achieved by Shishkin primarily and to the greatest extent in sketches, in the process of direct communication with nature. It is no coincidence that Shishkin’s friends, the Itinerant artists, found his sketches no less interesting than his paintings, and sometimes even more fresh and colorful. Meanwhile, apart from “Pines illuminated by the sun” and the richly painted, extremely expressive landscape “Oaks. Evening”, many of Shishkin’s excellent sketches from the best period of his work are almost not mentioned in art history literature.

These include “A Corner of an Overgrown Garden. Dry Grass” (1884), “Forest (Shmetsk near Narva)”, “On the Shores of the Gulf of Finland (Udrias near Narva)” (both 1888), “On Sandy Ground. Hovi along the Finnish railway" (1889, 90?), "Young pines near a sandy cliff. Mary-Hovi along the Finnish railway" (1890) and a number of others.

All of them are distinguished by a heightened sense of the form and texture of objects, a subtle gradation of nearby shades of color, freedom and variety of painting techniques while maintaining a strict, realistically accurate drawing.
Shishkin's numerous sketches, on which he worked especially enthusiastically during his creative heyday, testify to his sensitivity to the development trends of Russian art in the last decades of the 19th century, when interest in works of a sketch nature as a special pictorial form was growing.

Fog in the forest

In the eighties and nineties, the artist was increasingly attracted by the changing states of nature and quickly passing moments. Thanks to his interest in the light-air environment, in color, he is now more successful than before in this kind of work. An example of this is the painting “Foggy Morning” (1885), poetic in motif and harmonious in painting.
Among all the artist’s works, the painting “Morning in a Pine Forest” is the most widely known.

The idea was suggested to Shishkin by K.A. Savitsky, but the possibility cannot be ruled out that the impetus for the appearance of this canvas was the 1888 landscape “Fog in a Pine Forest”, painted, in all likelihood, like “Windfall”, after a trip to the Vologda forests. Apparently, “Fog in a Pine Forest,” which was successfully exhibited at a traveling exhibition in Moscow (now in a private collection in Czechoslovakia), gave rise to a mutual desire among Shishkin and Savitsky to paint a landscape with a similar motif, including a unique genre scene with frolicking bears.

After all, the leitmotif of the famous painting of 1889 is precisely the fog in a pine forest.
The entertaining genre motif introduced into the picture greatly contributed to its popularity, but the true value of the work was the beautifully expressed state of nature. This is not just a dense pine forest, but a morning in the forest with its fog that has not yet dissipated, with the lightly pinked tops of huge pines, and cold shadows in the thickets. You can feel the depth of the ravine, the wilderness. The presence of a bear family located on the edge of this ravine gives the viewer a feeling of remoteness and deafness of the wild forest.

At the turn of the eighties and nineties, Shishkin turned to the relatively rare theme of the winter torpor of nature and painted a large painting “Winter” (1890), posing in it the difficult task of conveying barely noticeable reflexes and almost monochrome painting.

On the eve of the 20th century, when various movements and trends emerged, and new artistic styles, forms and techniques were being searched for, Shishkin continued to confidently follow his once chosen path, creating life-true, meaningful and typical images of Russian nature. A worthy conclusion to his integral and original work was the painting “Ship Grove” (1898) - a canvas that is classic in its completeness and versatility of artistic image and perfection of composition. This landscape is based on natural studies made by Shishkin in his native Kama forests, where he found his ideal - a synthesis of harmony and greatness. But the work also embodies the deepest knowledge of Russian nature that was accumulated by the master over almost half a century of creative life.

The painting “Ship Grove” (the largest in size in Shishkin’s work) is, as it were, the last, final image in the epic he created, symbolizing the heroic Russian strength. The implementation of such a monumental plan as this work indicates that the sixty-six-year-old artist was in full bloom of his creative powers, but this was where his path in art ended.
On March 8 (20), 1898, he died in his studio at the easel, on which stood a new, just begun painting, “The Forest Kingdom.”

Tikhvin Cemetery of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra. Necropolis of Art Masters

Elabuga city monument to Shishkin

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In 1832, on January 25, in the city of Elabuga, Vyatebsk province, a son, Ivan, was born into the family of the merchant Shishkin Ivan Vasilyevich. The future artist received his first education at the Kazan gymnasium.

After 4 years of study, Ivan Shishkin enters the Moscow School of Painting. In 1856, after graduating from college, he decided to continue his studies in St. Petersburg and entered the Academy of Arts.

During the year of study within the walls of this institution, the artist not only mastered academic drawing, but also practiced painting in the suburbs of St. Petersburg.

The year 1860 was significant for Shishkin when he received an important award - the gold medal of the Academy. He had received awards before, but they were not of such significance.

While traveling, Shishkin visited Munich and Zurich, where he had the opportunity to study in the workshops of famous artists. Thanks to the work "" the artist was awarded the title of academician.

Outside of Russia, Shishkin perfectly draws works with a pen, which deserves great attention from foreigners who were amazed by the unprecedented talent of the Russian artist.

Some of the drawings were placed in the Düsseldorf Museum, where they were placed level with the works famous artists Europe.

In 1864, the painter Shishkin returned back to Russia, because... Outside his homeland, it did not seem possible for him to paint a Russian landscape. He travels a lot around his native country in search of picturesque places.

The artist dedicated a fairly large number of his works to the pine forest, among which the most famous are considered to be: "Pine forest ", "Morning in a pine forest" , "" , "Stream in the Forest".

His paintings were presented at exhibitions, as well as at the Association of Traveling Exhibitions. In 1873, Shishkin received the title of professor at the Academy of Arts, and for a short time he was in charge of the educational workshop.

Ivan Shishkin married only in 1977, the artist Olga Antonova-Lagoda became his wife. Their home is often visited by his colleagues and friends.

Shishkin's most striking painting "" was created by him in 1889. This picture is permeated with the morning air of the forest, you can feel the wilderness of the forest untouched by man. The popularity of this painting is still unchanged, which is why this work of art has no equal.

The artist's final work is a canvas "" , created by him in 1898. This painting demonstrates the talent and skill accumulated by the artist throughout his life.

Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin is rightfully considered a great landscape artist. He, like no one else, managed to convey through his canvases the beauty of the pristine forest, the endless expanses of fields, and the cold of a harsh region. When looking at his paintings, one often gets the impression that a breeze is about to blow or the cracking of branches is heard. Painting occupied all the artist’s thoughts so much that he even died with a brush in his hand, sitting at his easel.

Unlike his other paintings, the artist did not paint this alone. The bears are by Konstantin Savitsky. Ivan Shishkin judged fairly, and both artists signed the painting. However, when the finished canvas was brought to the buyer Pavel Tretyakov, he became angry and ordered Savitsky’s name to be erased, explaining that he had ordered the painting only from Shishkin, and not from two artists.