Russian artist Shishkin I.I. Masterpieces of Ivan Shishkin: The most famous paintings of the great Russian landscape painter In what style did Shishkin paint?

Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin(1832-1898) - Russian landscape artist, painter, draftsman and engraver. Representative of the Düsseldorf Art School.

Academician (1865), professor (1873), head of the landscape workshop (1894-1895) of the Academy of Arts.

Ivan Shishkin was born on January 13 (25), 1832 in the city of Elabuga. He came from the ancient Vyatka family of the Shishkins, was the son of the merchant Ivan Vasilyevich Shishkin (1792-1872).

Ivan Kramskoy.
Portrait of I. I. Shishkin.
(1873, Tretyakov Gallery)

At the age of 12, he was assigned to the 1st Kazan gymnasium, but having reached the 5th grade, he left it and entered the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture (1852-1856). Having completed the course at this institution, from 1857 he continued his education at the Imperial Academy of Arts, where, together with Gine, Jongin and others, he was listed as a student of Professor S. M. Vorobyov. Not content with studying within the walls of the academy, he diligently drew and wrote sketches from nature in the vicinity of St. Petersburg and on the island of Valaam, thanks to which he acquired increasing familiarity with its forms and the ability to accurately convey it with a pencil and brush. Already in the first year of his stay at the academy, he was awarded two small silver medals for a class drawing and for a view in the vicinity of St. Petersburg. In 1858 he received a large silver medal for a view of Valaam, in 1859 a small gold medal for a landscape from the outskirts of St. Petersburg, and finally in 1860 a large gold medal for two views of the area of Cucco, on Valaam.

Having acquired, along with this last award, the right to travel abroad as an academy pensioner, he went to Munich in 1861, visited the workshops of famous artists Benno and Franz Adam, who were very popular animal painters, and then in 1863 moved to Zurich, where he under the guidance of Professor R. Koller, who was then considered one of the best depictors of animals, he sketched and painted animals from life. In Zurich I tried engraving with “regia vodka” for the first time. From here he made an excursion to Geneva in order to get acquainted with the works of F. Dide and A. Kalam, and then moved to Dusseldorf and painted there, at the request of N. Bykov, “View in the vicinity of Dusseldorf” - a picture that, being sent to St. Petersburg, gave the artist the title of academician. Abroad, in addition to painting, he did a lot of pen drawings; his works of this kind surprised foreigners, and some were placed in the Düsseldorf Museum next to the drawings of first-class European masters.

Feeling homesick for his homeland, he returned to St. Petersburg in 1866 before his pension expired. Since then, he often traveled for artistic purposes throughout Russia, and almost every year he exhibited his works, first at the academy. After the Association of Traveling Exhibitions was established, he produced pen drawings at these exhibitions. In 1870, having joined the circle of aquafortists formed in St. Petersburg, he again began engraving with “royal vodka,” which he did not leave until the end of his life, devoting almost as much time to it as to painting. All these works each year increased his reputation as one of the best Russian landscape painters and an incomparable aquatic painter. The artist owned an estate in the village of Vyra (now the Gatchina district of the Leningrad region).

In 1873, the Academy elevated him to the rank of professor for the painting “Wilderness” it acquired. After the new charter of the academy came into effect, in 1892 he was invited to head its educational landscape workshop, but due to various circumstances he did not hold this position for long. He died suddenly in St. Petersburg on March 8 (20), 1898, sitting at an easel, working on a new painting. He was buried at the Smolensk Orthodox Cemetery. In 1950, the artist’s ashes were transferred along with the monument to the Tikhvin cemetery of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra.

Creation

"Portrait of I. Shishkin."
I. N. Kramskoy
(1880, Russian Museum)

Among Russian landscape painters, Shishkin undoubtedly holds the place of the most powerful artist. In all his works, he is an amazing connoisseur of plant forms, reproducing them with a subtle understanding of both the general character and the smallest distinctive features of any species of trees, bushes and grasses. Whether he took on the image of a pine or spruce forest, individual pines and spruces, just like their totality, received from him their true physiognomy, without any embellishment or understatement - that appearance and with those particulars that are fully explained and determined the soil and climate where the artist made them grow. Whether he depicted oaks or birches, they took on completely truthful forms in his foliage, branches, trunks, roots and in all details. The very area under the trees - stones, sand or clay, uneven soil overgrown with ferns and other forest herbs, dry leaves, brushwood, dead wood, etc. - received the appearance of perfect reality in Shishkin's paintings and drawings.

“But this realism often harmed his landscapes: in many of them it obscured the general mood, giving them the character not of paintings conceived not with the aim of arousing this or that feeling in the viewer, but of random, albeit excellent sketches. It should also be noted that with Shishkin what happens with almost every particularly strong artist was repeated: the science of forms was given to him to the detriment of color, which, while not being weak and inharmonious for him, still does not stand on the same level with masterful drawing. Therefore, Shishkin’s talent is sometimes expressed much more clearly in one-color drawings and etchings than in such works in which he used many colors,” some critics say. His paintings and drawings are so numerous that indicating even the most important of them would take up too much space; Especially many of them were sold among art lovers after a retrospective exhibition of the artist’s works over forty years of his activity was organized in 1891 and the sale after his death of what remained in his studio. It will be enough to mention Shishkin’s works in public collections. The Moscow Tretyakov Gallery is richest in them. It contains the following paintings: “Forest cutting”, “Afternoon in the vicinity of Moscow”, “Pine forest”, “Burnt forest”, “Rye”, “Wilds”, “Apiary”, “Spruce forest” and “Morning in a pine forest” and, in addition, seventeen masterful drawings. The Russian Museum owns the paintings: “Ship Grove”, “Meadow with Pines”, “Forest Wilderness” and “Glade”, five sketches and two drawings. According to the will of K. Soldatenkov, the Moscow Public Museum received the painting “View in the vicinity of Moscow” and one drawing.

D. Rovinsky numbered up to a hundred of all the etchings performed by Shishkin; he pointed, in addition, to 68 original lithographs and 15 zincographic experiments of this master. A. Beggrov, in 1884-1885, published in two series a collection of 24 phototypical photographs from charcoal drawings made for him by Shishkin. In 1886, the artist himself published an album of his selected engravings, numbering 25. Subsequently, the prints from the boards that served for this album, corrected and somewhat altered, were published by Marx (with the addition of several other etchings) in the form of a new album.

"Morning in a pine forest."
I. Shishkin, K. Savitsky

In the 1880s, 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), "In a Pine Forest" (1887) and others are close in nature to the works of the previous decade. However, they are interpreted with greater pictorial freedom. Shishkin’s best landscapes of this time reflect trends common to Russian fine art, which he refracted in his own way. The artist enthusiastically works on paintings that are wide in scope, epic in structure, glorifying the expanses of his 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.

Among all the artist’s works, the most popular painting is “Morning in a Pine Forest.” Its plot may have been suggested to Shishkin by K. A. Savitsky. There is another version that the impetus for the appearance of this canvas was the landscape “Fog in a Pine Forest” (1888), painted, in all likelihood, like “Windfall,” under the impression of a trip to the Vologda forests. “Fog in a Pine Forest,” which was a success at a traveling exhibition in Moscow (now in a private collection), could have aroused Shishkin and Savitsky’s desire to paint a canvas repeating the motif of the famous painting, but with the inclusion of a genre scene.

Family

The grave of I. I. Shishkin at the Tikhvin cemetery in the Alexander Nevsky Lavra (St. Petersburg).

First wife (from October 28, 1868) Evgenia Fedoseevna Vasilyeva (1847-1874). In this marriage, Shishkin had three children: sons Vladimir (1871-1873) and Konstantin (1873-1875), daughter Lydia (1869-1931).
Lagoda-Shishkin's second wife, Olga Antonovna (1850-1881) - landscape artist, Shishkin's student. On June 21, 1881, their daughter Ksenia was born, who, after the death of her mother, was raised by her sister, V. A. Lagoda.

Addresses in St. Petersburg

1880-1882 - 5th line of Vasilyevsky Island, 10;
1882 - 03/08/1898 - 5th line, 30, apartment building of I. N. Schmidt.

Memory

In Yelabuga, a monument to I. I. Shishkin was erected; since 1962, the Memorial House-Museum of I. I. Shishkin has been operating, next to which the Shishkin Ponds are located. Children's art school No. 1 and a street are named after Shishkin.

A number of streets in various cities of Russia are named after I. I. Shishkin.

In philately

In the USSR and the Russian Federation, stamps were repeatedly issued that celebrated the anniversaries of I. I. Shishkin and reproduced his works.

50 years since the death of I. I. Shishkin. I. N. Kramskoy. Portrait of the artist Ivan Shishkin. USSR, 1948, (DFA (ITC) #1264; Mi #1220).

I. I. Shishkin. "Rye". USSR, 1948, (DFA (ITC) #1265; Mi #1221).

I. I. Shishkin. "Morning in a pine forest." USSR, 1948, (DFA (ITC) #1266; Mi #1222).

I. N. Kramskoy. Portrait of the artist Ivan Shishkin. USSR, 1948, (DFA (ITC) #1267; Mi #1223).

(1832-1898) Russian artist

Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin was an unsurpassed master of Russian landscape painting. He was called the artist of the Russian forest, “a man-school,” “a milestone in the development of Russian landscape.” However, his art was perceived differently. Some critics called Shishkin an artist-photographer, implying the limited spirituality in his work.

At the end of his life, the artist experienced a completely unfriendly attitude not only towards his art, but also towards himself personally, which accelerated his death. However, time has put everything in its place. Ivan Shishkin remained in the cultural history of Russia as a great Russian artist, in whose paintings his love for life, for the land, for people was expressed with utmost clarity.

Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin was born in the ancient Russian city of Elabuga into a merchant family. His father Ivan Vasilyevich was deeply respected by his fellow countrymen. He himself sold bread, but was interested in technology and history, was fond of archeology and was even elected a corresponding member of the Moscow Archaeological Society. In 1871, the Moscow Synodal Printing House published a book by Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin about the history of the city of Elabuga, and even earlier he prepared the manuscript “The Life of the Elabuga merchant Ivan Vasilyevich Shishkin, written by himself in 1867.” For many years, Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin kept notes in a notebook about the most important events that took place in the city and in his own family. He called them “Notes of various sights.”

Everything in the house was controlled by Ivan Vasilyevich’s wife, Daria Romanovna, who supported a strict patriarchal way of life. The future artist was brought up in this respectable and cultured family.

The boy grew up surrounded by nature and was very impressionable. In addition to reading, since childhood he loved drawing most of all, for which he was sometimes called “dauber” in the house.

The father wanted to give his son a good education, hired him private teachers, and sent him to a men's gymnasium in Kazan. He was going to send him along the merchant line, but, noticing that Ivan did not show any interest in this matter, he left him to choose his own occupation.

In 1852, Ivan went to Moscow and entered the School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. From his youth, he chose the motto for himself: “Education, work, love of studies” - and steadily followed it.

Already at the school, Ivan Shishkin finally chose his path in painting - Russian landscape and nature in all its diversity. Shortly before graduation, the young painter painted one of his most remarkable paintings, “Rime,” which was highly praised by artists.

In January 1856, Ivan Shishkin entered the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts, but studied without interest. At that time, Nicolas Poussin and Claude Lorrain were considered the main masters of landscape painting at the Academy. Their paintings amazed the imagination with the majestic landscapes that their imagination inspired. Shishkin sought something else. He wanted to paint living nature, which does not need decoration. “The most important thing for a landscape painter is a diligent study of nature,” he wrote in his student notebook back in Moscow, “as a result of which paintings from life should be without imagination.” Subsequently, many critics noted that Ivan Shishkin was a real researcher of nature and knew “every wrinkle of the bark, bend of the branches, combination of leaf stems in bouquets of herbs...”. Already at the Academy, he began to gradually develop his own system of painting, in which he intuitively sought to establish the national in the landscape.

In 1857, Ivan Shishkin received a small silver medal at the exam for two paintings - “View from the outskirts of St. Petersburg” and “Landscape on Fox Nose”. The artist was filled with the brightest hopes for the future. His pride was also flattered by the fact that the Academy’s management sent students with him to the summer sketches that he conducted in the village of Dubki near Sestroretsk.

Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin was a deeply religious person, so it is not surprising that he was attracted to Valaam with its special atmosphere of piety. Moreover, the island was famous for its picturesque nature. In 1858, Shishkin visited Valaam for the first time. He brought from there many sketches and pen drawings and at the end of the year he received a second academic award - a large silver medal for landscape painting “View on the Island of Valaam.” Now this painting is kept in the Kiev Museum of Russian Art. At the same time, Ivan Shishkin exhibited his paintings in the halls of the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. They were bought, and the artist received his first big money.

Throughout his studies at the Academy, Ivan Shishkin received academic awards, which gave him the right to freely choose a job for the summer. He once again visited Valaam, where he completed the large painting “Cucco”. This was the name of one of the tracts on the island. For it he received a large gold medal, and the leadership of the Academy sent the artist abroad.

Ivan Shishkin spent more than a year abroad, visited many cities in Germany, traveled to the Czech Republic, Switzerland, Holland, and other countries. He visited all the most famous European museums, visited artists' studios and did not find anything instructive there. Only the art of Dutch and Belgian artists somehow reconciled Shishkin with abroad. He worked a lot there, too, and went out on sketches, although the alien nature did not particularly inspire him.

However, in February 1865, Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin presented three of his drawings at a permanent exhibition in Düsseldorf. They were a success. One of the magazines even published an article about the young Russian artist. In April of the same year, Shishkin again participated in the exhibition, and his drawings were received with even greater enthusiasm. The artist received an offer to exhibit them in Bonn, Aachen and Cologne.

Soon Ivan Shishkin returned to his homeland. He received a certificate from the Academy of Arts to practice “landscape painting from nature in different cities of Russia” and went to his place in Yelabuga.

Returning to St. Petersburg, Ivan Shishkin became close friends with the newly organized Artel of Artists, headed by Ivan Nikolaevich Kramskoy, which united young Russian artists who rejected the academicism of the old school of painting. Shishkin ardently supported their ideas, although his first work, which he wrote upon returning to his homeland, “Swiss Landscape,” still bore the imprint of the academic traditions that he had absorbed during his years of study. However, his subsequent works and, in particular, the sketch “Noon. Neighborhoods of Moscow. Bratsevo" marked the birth of a new style for the artist. Starting from this work, the poetic principle comes to the fore in Shishkin’s work. Three years later he will return to this sketch and paint the painting “Afternoon”. It will become the first painting by the artist to be acquired by the famous collector of Russian art P. M. Tretyakov.

At the same time, another important event occurred in the artist’s life. He married Evgenia Alexandrovna Vasilyeva, and soon they had a daughter, Lydia.

A landscape class was created especially for Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin at the Academy of Arts, where he began teaching. For his commitment to Russian nature, he was called the “king of the forest”.

In 1870, Russian artists created a new association - the Association of Art Traveling Exhibitions, the idea of which was proposed by G. G. Myasoedov. Ivan Shishkin enthusiastically supported this initiative and signed the charter of the Partnership. The following year, their first exhibition took place, to which he presented his painting “Evening”. At the same time, he set to work on a new work, “Pine Forest,” for a competition at the Society for the Encouragement of the Arts. It received first prize and was purchased by Tretyakov for his gallery.

Over the next few years, Ivan Shishkin's life turned out to be full of adversity. The father died, and then his little son Vladimir. My wife was sick. Shishkin was tired, but continued to work. In February 1873, for the painting “Wilderness”, he received the title of professor. In May of the same year, he prepared and himself printed his first album of etchings.

However, tragedies continued to haunt the artist. In 1874, his wife died, leaving Ivan Shishkin with two children - daughter Lydia and one-year-old son Konstantin, who also died soon. The heavy losses turned out to be too much for Shishkin to bear. He started drinking, couldn’t work for a long time, then took up photography.

In the end, the habit of work won out. Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin began to paint again and at the fourth exhibition of the Peredvizhniki in 1875 he presented his new paintings “Spring in a Pine Forest” and “First Snow”.

Trying to overcome severe depression, the painter spends a lot of time in society and meets with friends. He was friendly with Dmitry Ivanovich Mendeleev, a famous chemist, in whose house the famous “Mendeleev Wednesdays” took place. Many famous artists, writers, and composers visited there. Here Ivan Shishkin met his future wife Olga Antonovna Lagoda. She studied at the Academy of Arts, but then left there and began studying with Shishkin.

In the fall of 1878, Ivan Shishkin, together with other artists, traveled to Paris to the World Exhibition. In the same year, his painting “Rye” was presented at a traveling exhibition, which took first place. Everyone recognized that it became the largest event in the artistic life of Russia.

Like many other Russian artists, Shishkin was in confrontation with the Academy of Arts. He himself had not worked there for a long time. “This is a den in which everything more or less talented perishes, where students are developed into clerks,” he said. He instilled in his students a different view of art: “Work as your heart desires, do not constrain yourself with these recipes. Study the living body."

Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin was very demanding of his students, sometimes even harsh, but he was no less demanding of himself. His working day began at nine o'clock in the morning and sometimes ended at two in the morning. Every year the artist painted several paintings, which were distinguished by high skill and an amazing sense of love for Russian nature.

However, trouble struck again in Ivan Shishkin’s personal life. Soon after the birth of their daughter, the second wife of the artist O. A. Lagoda-Shishkin unexpectedly died. The new loss shocked him, but this time the artist did not drown out the emotional pain with alcohol and continued to work.

His painting “Kama”, sent to an exhibition in Kyiv, aroused great interest, a real pilgrimage was made to it, and there was a quarrel between buyers.

After some time, another painting by Ivan Shishkin, “Polesie,” will cause the same excitement. It has not been completely preserved to this day. In the Kiev Museum of Russian Art you can see only its right side. Another fragment of the painting is kept in a private collection. However, Shishkin later repeated it in a smaller size for one of his admirers. It is now in Moscow, in a private collection.

The skill of Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin is becoming generally recognized. Many of the artist’s works and, in particular, such as “Pines illuminated by the sun”, “Edge”, “Black Forest”, “Fern”, are called pearls of Russian art and true masterpieces.

In 1886, the third album of etchings by Ivan Shishkin was published. He sent several sheets from it to Paris, where his etchings were called “poems in drawings.”

At the XVII traveling exhibition, Shishkin’s new painting “Morning in a Pine Forest” was presented, which has an interesting story. The author wrote it together with another artist - K. Savitsky. He depicted bears. At first it bore the signatures of both artists, but Tretyakov, who bought it and was very critical of Savitsky, ordered his name to be obscured. So this painting is still on display only with Shishkin’s signature.

The artist was always concerned about the state of Russian art. In the last years of his life, he advocated the reorganization of the Academy of Arts, hoping to revive the Russian art school on its basis. However, not all artists supported this idea, and therefore his relations with other members of the Association of Traveling Exhibitions became complicated. They considered the reform of the Academy to be an empty matter and accused Shishkin of apostasy.

In November 1891, a retrospective exhibition of works by Ivan Shishkin, written over forty years, opened in the halls of the Academy of Arts. It featured 300 sketches and more than 200 drawings. And three years later, Shishkin became the professor and head of the landscape workshop of the Higher Art School at the Academy of Arts. Together with him, other famous artists returned to the Academy and began teaching there - Ilya Repin, A. Kuindzhi, V. Makovsky. With their arrival, a spirit of creativity reigned at the Academy, but this idyllic relationship did not last long. Intrigues that had been extinguished for a while were resumed, and feuds began between the artists. It got to the point that Arkhip Kuindzhi called Ivan Shishkin’s method harmful to painting.

In the end, Shishkin could not stand the open hostility of his former friends and resigned. In 1897, the artist was again offered to take the place of head of the landscape workshop, but by that time he was already unwell, his heart often failed him, and he had to work in fits and starts.

In the same year, Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin wrote his last work, “Ship Grove,” which was a great success.

The Tsar bought it, adding another Shishkin painting to his art collection. The artist decided to paint a new painting, “Red Forest,” but in March 1898 he died right in front of his easel.

Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin was buried at the Smolensk cemetery in St. Petersburg.

Born on January 13 (January 25 - new style) 1832 in Yelabuga, Vyatka province (now the Republic of Tatarstan) in the family of a merchant of the second guild, Ivan Vasilyevich Shishkin. I.V. Shishkina was an extraordinary person. Thanks to his incorruptible honesty, he enjoyed the respect of his fellow countrymen and for eight years he was the mayor of Elabuga, having worked a lot for the good of the city. The wooden water supply system he built is still partially in use. The framework of the merchant environment was tight for him, he was interested in archaeology, history, natural sciences, mechanics, wrote the “History of the City of Yelabuga” published in 1871 in Moscow, composed his own biography, participated in excavations of a monument of ancient Bulgarian culture, for which, on the threshold of his eightieth birthday, In 1872, he was awarded the title of corresponding member of the Moscow Archaeological Society.
It was the father, noticing his son’s passion for art, who began to write out special articles and biographies of famous artists for him. It was he who, having decided his fate, sent the young man to Moscow in 1852 to study at the School of Painting and Sculpture. This, however, was preceded by unsuccessful attempts to accustom the future painter to “positive” activities. The mother was especially zealous in this. Realizing that Ivan was almost “idiotic” in commerce, she came up with the nickname “arithmetician-grammer” and in every possible way annoyed him, preventing him from doing book “sitting”. But Ivan was firm. This firmness is evidenced by his independent departure in 1848 from the First Men's Gymnasium of Kazan, motivated by his reluctance to “become an official.” Shishkin thought about the artistic “field” early on. For four years spent in his father’s house after his “escape” from Kazan (1848-52), he kept notes in which he seemed to guess his future life. We quote: “An artist must be a supreme being, living in an ideal world of art and striving only for improvement. The qualities of an artist: sobriety, moderation in everything, love of art, modesty of character, conscientiousness and honesty.”
From 1852 to 1856, Shishkin studied at the recently opened (in 1843) Moscow School of Painting and Sculpture. His mentor was A. Mokritsky, a thoughtful and attentive teacher who helped the aspiring painter find himself. In 1856, Shishkin entered the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts. There he studied with S. Vorobyov, continuing, however, to consult with Mokritsky on all artistic issues that arose. Since then, the northern capital has become his hometown.
At the Academy, Shishkin stood out noticeably for his talents; his successes were celebrated with medals; in 1860 he graduated from the Academy with a large gold medal, received for two paintings “View on the island of Valaam. The area of Cucco” and giving the right to an internship abroad. But he was in no hurry to go abroad, instead going to Yelabuga in 1861. In his native places, Shishkin worked tirelessly. His father respectfully noted in his “Notes of Sights”: “Son Ivan Ivanovich arrived on May 21 as a classy artist of the first category. He left again for St. Petersburg on October 25. Throughout his life, he painted up to 50 different paintings.” By this time, the artist had already determined the area of application of his powers - in the future he saw himself only as a landscape painter. While still studying in Moscow, he wrote in his diary: “A landscape painter is a true artist, he feels deeper, purer.”
From 1862 to 1865, Shishkin lived abroad - mainly in Germany and Switzerland, while visiting the Czech Republic, France, Belgium and Holland. In Düsseldorf, he painted a lot in the Teutoburg Forest and was extremely popular among the local residents. He himself ironically recalled: “Wherever and wherever you go, they show everywhere that this Russian has gone, even in stores they ask if you are the Russian Shishkin who draws so magnificently?” Upon returning to Russia in 1865, the artist received the title of academician for the painting “View in the vicinity of Dusseldorf”.
Meanwhile, significant events took place in Russian fine art at this time. Back in 1863, a group of young realist painters led by I. Kramskoy with great noise (“the case of 14”), refusing to paint a picture on a given topic, left the Academy in protest against the dominance of dead academicism. "Rebels" founded the Artel of Artists. Shishkin became close to this Artel in the late 1860s. “The loudest of all,” recalled Repin, “was the voice of the hero Shishkin. The audience used to gasp behind his back when he, with his powerful paws of a drayman and clumsy fingers from work, began to distort and erase his brilliant drawing, and the drawing seemed like magic from such a rough the appeals come out more and more gracefully and brilliantly.”
From the Artel in 1870 the Partnership of Traveling Art Exhibitions grew, which became a symbol of the new artistic era. Shishkin was one of its founders. He never betrayed the ideals of the Wandering movement, participating in every traveling exhibition until his death in 1898. The artist developed a particularly close relationship with I. Kramskoy, one of the most active “advertisers” of Shishkin’s work. Shishkin always said that Kramskoy had the most beneficial influence on him. It was Kramskoy who said the most precise words about Shishkin: “When he is in front of nature, he is exactly in his element, here he is bold and does not think about how, what and why; he is the only person among us who knows nature in a scientific way.” Kramskoy even provided Shishkin with his own workshop when he was preparing his work “Midday. In the vicinity of Moscow” (1869) for an academic exhibition, with which, in fact, the artist’s fame began. This was the first Shishkin painting acquired by P. Tretyakov. The author received 300 rubles for it.
Shishkin often visited his homeland, where he collected materials for his new works. For example, a trip to Yelabuga in 1871 prompted him to paint the famous painting “Pine Forest. Mast Forest in the Vyatka Province.”
The artist’s personal life was tragic. He was married twice for love: first to the sister of the talented landscape painter F. Vasiliev, who died early, (whom he took care of and taught the basics of craftsmanship), Elena; then - on the artist Olga Lagoda. Both of them died young: Elena Alexandrovna - in 1874, and Olga Antonovna - in 1881. Shishkin lost two sons as well. Deaths especially thickened around him by the mid-1870s (his father also died in 1872); the artist, having fallen into despair, stopped painting for a while and became carried away by libations.
But his powerful nature and devotion to art took their toll. Shishkin was one of those who could not help but work. He returned to his creative life, which in his last two decades coincided almost seamlessly with his life in general. He lived only by painting, only by his native nature, which became his main theme. One of Shishkin’s contemporaries, who spent the summer next door to his dacha, said: “He worked every day. He returned to work at certain hours so that there was equal lighting. I knew that at 2 o’clock in the afternoon he would definitely be painting oak trees in the meadow, that under in the evening, when a gray fog already envelops the distance, he sits by the pond, writes willows, and that in the morning, before light or dawn, he can be found at the turn into the village, where waves of eared rye roll in, where dewdrops light up and go out on the roadside grass.”
He traveled a lot around Russia: he wrote sketches in the Crimea, in Belovezhskaya Pushcha, on the Volga, on the Baltic coast, in Finland and present-day Karelia. He constantly exhibited at personal, academic, traveling, trade and industrial exhibitions. In 1894-95 he headed the landscape workshop at the Academy, turning out to be a surprisingly “tolerant” teacher - Shishkin did not flaunt his rigid “partisanship”, putting talent, and not loyalty to one direction or another, in the first place in his assessment of the artist.
Shishkin died at work. On March 8 (March 20 - according to the new style), 1898, he painted in the studio in the morning. Then I visited my relatives. Then, complaining of feeling unwell, he returned to the workshop. At some point, the assistant saw the master fall from his chair. Running up to him, he saw that Shishkin was no longer breathing.

biography and creativity

The birthplace of one of the most famous, even cult artists of Russia is the city Yelabuga. He was born in this provincial town on January 13, 1832. In the future, he became known as a landscape painter, conveying with photographic accuracy the smallest details of the nature of his native land.

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

Family and study

On the formation of views and creative style Shishkina The father had great influence. A poor merchant who was fond of archeology and wrote “The History of the City of Yelabuga” was the man who managed to pass on all his knowledge to his son. Shishkin Sr. sold grain, and at his own expense he restored ancient buildings in Yelabuga and developed a local water supply system.

The path of the future artist was predetermined from childhood. He entered the 1st Kazan gymnasium, but did not graduate from the educational institution. In the fifth grade, Shishkin left school, returned home and devoted all his attention to drawing from life. For four years he painted the forests of Yelabuga, and in 1852 he entered the Moscow School of Painting and Sculpture.

Self-portrait

The exhibition of Caucasian mountain views by L. Lagorio and marine paintings by I. Aivazovsky was fateful for Ivan Shishkin. There he saw a painting that fascinates and inspires many. It was “The Ninth Wave” by Aivazovsky. Another factor that determined the artist’s further work was studying in the class of Mokritsky, who admired the work of K. Bryullov. The teacher was able to discern talent in the quiet, even shy student and in every possible way encouraged him to take up landscape painting.

In 1856, Shishkin graduated from college and entered the Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg. In his first year of study he was awarded a silver medal. The award went to him for a pencil drawing and a view of St. Petersburg made with a brush. The artist became one of the best students of the Academy, and in 1860 he graduated with a Great Gold Medal. Such a high award gave the right to travel abroad for three years to improve creative skills. But Shishkin preferred the place where he spent his childhood and adolescence - Yelabuga.

Foreign vicissitudes

The artist left Russia only in 1862. He visited Zurich, Munich, Geneva and Dusseldorf. He got acquainted with the works of famous painters and studied with R. Koller himself. During the same period, by order of N. Bykov, he wrote

"View in the vicinity of Düsseldorf"

for her he received the title of academician.

Shishkin constantly improved his skills and developed his own style. Just look at the pen drawings, which meticulously convey the details of the surrounding objects! Two such works are still among the exhibits of the Düsseldorf Museum.

In 1865, Shishkin returned to Russia. He is already a recognized and recognizable artist, capable of creative achievements. In the works of the early 1860s. Attempts to achieve maximum resemblance to nature can be traced. This is as can be seen from the picture

"Forest cutting"

somewhat disrupts the integrity of the landscape. Working long and hard, the artist overcomes the academic postulates of an abstract landscape and creates a series of paintings. An example of a “reborn” master is the canvas

"Noon. In the vicinity of Moscow."

The painting is filled with light, it exudes peace and tranquility, it can create a joyful, even blissful mood.

The place of the forest in Shishkin’s work

In 1870, he became one of the founders of the Partnership of Itinerants and presented a painting at the second exhibition of the society

"Sosnovy Bor"

The work still amazes today with the integrity of its color scheme, photographic rendering of nature and incredible combination of colors.

Other paintings that recreate majestic forests are “Black Forest”, “Forest Wilderness”, “Spruce Forest”, “Reserve. Pine Forest”, “Forest (Shmetsk near Narva)”, “Corner of an overgrown forest. Snitch-grass”, “In a pine forest” and others. The painter depicts plant forms with amazing precision, carefully depicting every twig, every blade of grass. The paintings resemble beautiful, but still accidentally taken photographs. This trend is typical only for works that use a large color palette. Canvases depicting forests, made in a single color scheme, fully reveal the artist’s talent.

Creative techniques

The most famous painting by the master is

"Morning in a pine forest"

presented at the exhibition of the Itinerants in 1889. The popularity of the work is that it is filled with serenity, the expectation of something beautiful and is a symbol of the homeland. And even though the bears were written by K. Savitsky, each of us associates these animals with small children.

The result of Shishkin’s entire creative path is the canvas

“Ship Grove” (1898).

It is completed according to all the laws of classicism and fully reveals the artistic image. The painting has one more property - incredible monumentality.

I. I. Shishkin died in his workshop on March 8 (20), 1898. He never completed the painting “The Forest Kingdom,” but the legacy that remains is still capable of touching the soul of our contemporaries to this day.

Sestroretsky pine forest 1886

View on the island of Valaam. Cucco area1858-60

Birch Forest 1871

Oak. grove1887

Birch Grove

Birch and mountain ash 1878

Before the Storm 1884

Among the flat valley... 1883

View in the vicinity of St. Petersburg 1865

Winter in the forest, frost 1877

In the wild north

Above the embankment 1887

Coniferous forest 1873

Winter 1890

Coniferous forest. Sunny day 1895

Rye 1878

Sosnovy Bor. Mast forest in Vyatka province

Evening 1871

Seaside view

Rain in an oak forest 1891

Autumn landscape. Park in Pavlovsk 1888

Forest 1897

Early autumn 1889

Autumn forest 1876

Mountain path. Crimea 1879

Golden Autumn 1888

Winter forest

pine forest

Forest in Mordvinovo. 1891

Mushroom pickers

Stream in a birch forest 1883

Dali

Winter. Moscow region. Etude

Pines. sunlit

The Ligovka river in the village of Konstantinovka near St. Petersburg. 1869

Two female figures 1880s

Children in the forest

First snow 1875

A Walk in the Woods 1869

Oak trees 1886

In Crimea. Monastery of Kozma and Damian near Chatyrdag 1879

Pine on a rock. 1855

Forest in the evening 1868-1869

On the banks of the Kama River near Yelabuga

“But this realism often harmed his landscapes: in many of them it obscured the general mood, giving them the character not of paintings conceived not with the aim of arousing this or that feeling in the viewer, but of random, albeit excellent sketches. It should also be noted that with Shishkin what happens with almost every particularly strong artist was repeated: the science of forms was given to him to the detriment of color, which, while not being weak and inharmonious for him, still does not stand on the same level with masterful drawing. Therefore, Shishkin’s talent is sometimes expressed much more clearly in one-color drawings and etchings than in such works in which he used many colors,” some critics say. His paintings and drawings are so numerous that indicating even the most important of them would take up too much space; Especially many of them were sold among art lovers after a retrospective exhibition of the artist’s works over forty years of his activity was organized in 1891 and the sale after his death of what remained in his studio. It will be enough to mention Shishkin’s works in public collections. The Moscow Tretyakov Gallery is richest in them. It contains paintings: “Forest cutting”, “Afternoon in the vicinity of Moscow”, “Pine forest”, “Burnt forest”, “Rye”, “Wilds”, “Apiary”, “Spruce forest” and “Morning in a pine forest” and, in addition, seventeen masterful drawings. The Russian Museum owns the paintings: “Ship Grove”, “Meadow with Pines”, “Forest Wilderness” and “Glade”, five sketches and two drawings. According to the will of K. Soldatenkov, the Moscow Public Museum received the painting “View in the vicinity of Moscow” and one drawing.

Among all the artist’s works, the most popular painting is “Morning in a Pine Forest”. Its plot may have been suggested to Shishkin by K. A. Savitsky. There is another version that the impetus for the appearance of this canvas was the landscape “Fog in a Pine Forest” (1888), painted, in all likelihood, like “Windfall,” under the impression of a trip to the Vologda forests. “Fog in a Pine Forest,” which was a success at a traveling exhibition in Moscow (now in a private collection), could have aroused Shishkin and Savitsky’s desire to paint a canvas repeating the motif of the famous painting, but with the inclusion of a genre scene.