Where Shishkin painted a picture of three bears. Description of the artwork «Three bears» And

It's amazing how the life of a work of art that came out from under the brush of a master can turn out. Canvas by I. Shishkin “Morning in pine forest"Everyone knows and mostly as a picture of" Three Bears ". The paradox also lies in the fact that four bears are depicted on the canvas, which were completed by the excellent genre painter K. A. Savitsky.

A bit from the biography of I. Shishkin

The future artist was born in Yelabuga in 1832, on January 13, in the family of a poor merchant who was fascinated by local history and archeology. He enthusiastically passed on his knowledge to his son. The boy stopped attending the Kazan gymnasium after the fifth grade, and all free time spent, drawing from nature. Then he graduated not only from the School of Painting in Moscow, but also from the Academy in St. Petersburg. His talent as a landscape painter was quite determined by this time. The young artist, after a short trip abroad, left for his native places, where he painted nature untouched by the hand of man. He exhibited his new works at exhibitions of the Wanderers, amazing and delighting the audience with the almost photographic veracity of his canvases. But the painting “Three Bears”, written in 1889, became the most famous.

Friend and co-author Konstantin Apollonovich Savitsky

K.A. Savitsky was born in Taganrog in the family of a military doctor in 1844. He graduated from the Academy in St. Petersburg and continued to improve his skills in Paris. When he returned, P. M. Tretyakov bought his first work for his collection. Since the 70s of the XIX century, the artist exhibited his most interesting genre works at exhibitions of the Wanderers. K. A. Savitsky quickly gained popularity among the general public. The author especially likes his canvas “Knows the Unclean”, which can now be seen in the State Tretyakov Gallery. Shishkin and Savitsky became friends so tightly that Ivan Ivanovich asked to become his friend godfather own son. On the mountain, both the boy died at the age of three. And then other tragedies swept over them. Both buried their wives. Shishkin, submitting to the will of the Creator, believed that troubles open an artistic gift in him. He also appreciated great talent from his friend. Therefore, it is not surprising that K.A. Savitsky became a co-author of the painting "Three Bears". Although Ivan Ivanovich himself was perfectly able to write animals.

"Three Bears": a description of the painting

Art critics honestly admit that they do not know the history of the painting. Her idea, the very idea of ​​the canvas, apparently arose while searching for nature on one of the large islands of Seliger Gorodomlya. Night recedes. Dawn breaks. The first rays of the sun make their way through the thick tree trunks and the fog rising from the lake. One powerful pine tree is uprooted from the ground and half broken and occupies the central part of the composition. Its fragment with a dried crown falls into the ravine on the right. It is not written, but its presence is felt. And what a wealth of colors the landscape painter used! The cool morning air is blue-green, slightly hazy and hazy. The mood of awakening nature is conveyed by green, blue and sunny yellow colors. In the background, golden rays shimmer brightly in high crowns. In all the work one can feel the hand of I. Shishkin.

Meeting of two friends

Show new job Ivan Ivanovich wanted his friend. Savitsky came to the workshop. This is where the questions come in. Either Shishkin suggested that Konstantin Apollonovich add three bears to the picture, or Savitsky himself looked at it with a fresh look and made a proposal to introduce an animalistic element into it. This, of course, was to enliven the desert landscape. And so it was done. Savitsky very successfully, very organically inscribed four animals on a fallen tree. Well-fed funny bear cubs turned out like little children who frolic and explore the world under the supervision of a strict mother. He, like Ivan Ivanovich, signed on canvas. But when Shishkin's painting "Three Bears" came to P. M. Tretyakov, he, having paid the money, demanded that Savitsky's signature be washed off, since the main work was done by Ivan Ivanovich, and his style was undeniable. This can complete the description of Shishkin's painting "Three Bears". But this story has a "sweet" continuation.

confectionery factory

In the 70s 19th century Enterprising Germans Einem and Geiss built a confectionery factory in Moscow, which produced very high quality sweets, cookies and other similar products. To increase sales, an advertising offer was invented: print reproductions of Russian paintings on wrappers, and on the back - brief information about the picture. It turned out both tasty and informative. Now it is not known when P. Tretyakov's permission was received to apply reproductions of paintings from his collection on sweets, but on one of the candy wrappers, which depicts the painting "Three Bears" by Shishkin, there is a year - 1896.

After the revolution, the factory expanded, and V. Mayakovsky was inspired and composed an advertisement that is printed on the side of the candy wrapper. She urged to save money in the savings bank in order to buy tasty, but expensive sweets. And up today in any chain store you can buy "Clumsy Bear", which is remembered by all sweet tooth as "Three Bears". The same name was assigned to the painting by I. Shishkin.

"Three Bears" - a picture called so in the common people, it has official name- "Morning in a pine forest". The canvas was painted in oil in 1889, its dimensions are 139 x 213 (rather large), it is stored in the State Tretyakov Gallery. The signature under the picture is only Ivan Shishkin.

Most replicated picture

The official name is more consistent with the painting itself, since there are four bears on the canvas, not three. But there is no person on the territory of the CIS who would not know this work, and precisely under the name "Three Bears". The painting is incredibly popular, it can be argued that by saying modern language, this is the most hyped picture. This was facilitated by wrappers of the most purchased and delicious sweets in Soviet times, tablecloths, bedspreads and wall rugs repeating the plot. And it is the bears depicted in the foreground that are famous among the general population, and the beautifully depicted morning forest serves as a backdrop.

Not a very good collaboration

And the bears were painted by another artist - Savitsky Konstantin Apollonovich (1844 - 1905), genre painter, academician, friend of Shishkin. Savitsky convinced Shishkin that the picture lacked dynamics, and the animals in the foreground would make up for the lack. Art historians write that Shishkin did not succeed in bears, but Savitsky - on the contrary. And, indeed, the clubfoot turned out so well that, with mutual consent, the friends put their signatures under the picture. But Tretyakov and Savitsky at that time had some friction, and when buying a painting for his gallery, he demanded that Savitsky's signature be removed. Obviously, the collector's desire was the law, and only Shishkin's signature remained, and he received the fee alone and, probably, did not share it with the co-author, because they ceased to be friends.

Island covered with pines

This is the "wrong side" of the canvas "Three Bears". The picture is so beautiful, calm, blissful. Of course, Tretyakov was a connoisseur and connoisseur of painting, and the forest depicted consummate master, represented for the buyer true value and the bears didn't even like it. Yes, and experts are delighted with the landscape that Shishkin spied on Gorodomlya Island (Lake Seliger), brilliantly transferred to the canvas.

Popularly known as the "Three Bears", the painting really does a wonderful job of conveying the state of nature. At first glance, it is clear that this is the morning. The mist pierced by the rays of the rising sun is amazingly depicted.

landscape queen

The brilliant landscape painter, in love with Shishkin, often painted pine trees. Different, at any time of the year, lit by the sun and covered with snow, they are beautiful.

The smallest needles are visible on his canvases, the roughness of the bark is felt, it seems that the smell of pine comes from the paintings of Ivan Ivanovich. "Three Bears" - depicting the wilderness of the forest. It seems that you can hear the crackling of the trunks of centuries-old pines, but how you feel the depth of the cliff located behind the right bear cub. And the infinity of the forest is depicted ingeniously. And the fog, still blue at the edges, in the center already illuminated by the sun. And the teddy bear, drawn on the right, seems to have admired the beautiful morning. And nature has not yet fully woken up, and breathes in the morning coolness. Brilliant work, masterpiece. Maybe he didn't need dynamics.

The result is complete harmony.

In fairness, it must be said that the bears do not spoil the canvas in any way, they fit into it very well. The painting "Three Bears", the description of which was given above, is very organic, and it is impossible to imagine it without these good-natured representatives of the wild. Perhaps the complacency emanating from a mother bear with three cubs is explained by the absence of a person near. And this peace of animals also emphasizes the depth of the thicket of the forest. “... And fresh moss is crushed under the paws, dry branches crack under the weight ...” - the poet’s wonderful words about the picture. Morning, silence, harmony in the plant and animal world, in nature in general - the picture has a very calming effect: “... and just look at this beauty, and I know that it will Save, Warm!”

Painting Shishkin Ivan Ivanovich "Morning in a pine forest" - this is perhaps the most famous painting, owned by this Russian landscape painter. The canvas depicts a she-bear with three little cubs playing on a fallen pine tree. The picture is made in the style characteristic of Shishkin: warm shades, skillfully traced details, soft sunlight. But the main highlight of the canvas is the mischievous cubs. They are depicted so cheerful, carefree, so “alive” that it immediately becomes clear that the artist treated the forest and its inhabitants with big love and awe. Or rather, artists.

How "Morning in a Pine Forest" was Created

The history of the creation of the painting “Morning in a Pine Forest” is quite interesting - for example, not everyone knows that Shishkin is not the only author of the canvas. The idea for the painting was suggested to him by Konstantin Savitsky, who became the co-author of the painting, personally painting all the bears. But his name was erased from the canvas by the philanthropist Tretyakov who bought the masterpiece.

He noted that in the picture "everything speaks of the manner of painting, of the creative method peculiar to Shishkin." Of course, such a description of Shishkin’s painting “Morning in a Pine Forest” certainly flattered the great painter, but after the incident, Shishkin and Savitsky managed not to quarrel, but to remain friends on long years. Konstantin Savitsky even became the godfather for Shishkin's son. They were brought together by many things, so that the erased signature could not affect strong friendship and positive relationships.

Although Savitsky and Shishkin’s painting “Morning in a Pine Forest” owes much of its popularity to Tretyakov, the German confectioner Ferdinand von Einem made a significant contribution to its fame, who placed the plot from this canvas on the wrapper of his chocolates"Bear clubfoot." Of course, the image on the wrapper was very simplified, but still, people quickly fell in love with the cubs. And soon, not a single holiday was complete without the famous chocolates with waffles inside. Among the people, the painting was tacitly called “Three Bears” (which, however, is not entirely true, because there are four bears on it). But, apparently, consonance with folk tale"Masha and the Bears", where there were really three bears. Sometimes the canvas is also called "Morning in pine forest", but that's a misnomer.

These sweets with a waffle inside continued to be produced after the October Revolution - however, it was no longer von Einem's confectionery that was doing this, but the Red October enterprise. But this did not make them less fond of sweets.

This painting remains popular to this day - its reproductions can be seen in many apartments. After all, its warm, sincere atmosphere is able to bring warmth, tranquility, and comfort to the house. The original today has become an adornment of the Petersburg Tretyakov Gallery. Many art connoisseurs come to admire this great work of Russian visual arts.

Plot

With rare exceptions, the plot of Shishkin's paintings (if you look at this issue broadly) is one - nature. Ivan Ivanovich is an enthusiastic, enamored contemplator. And the viewer becomes an eyewitness of the artist's meeting with his native spaces.

Shishkin was an extraordinary connoisseur of the forest. He knew everything about trees of different species and noticed mistakes in the drawing. In the open air, the artist's students were ready to literally hide in the bushes, just not to hear the spacing in the spirit of “There can be no such birch” or “these pines are fake”.

The students were so afraid of Shishkin that they hid in the bushes.

As for people and animals, they occasionally appeared in Ivan Ivanovich's paintings, but they were more of a background than an object of attention. “Morning in a Pine Forest” is perhaps the only canvas where bears compete with the forest. For this, thanks to one of Shishkin's best friends - the artist Konstantin Savitsky. He proposed such a composition and depicted animals. True, Pavel Tretyakov, who bought the painting, erased the name of Savitsky, so for a long time the bears were attributed to Shishkin.

Portrait of Shishkin by I. N. Kramskoy. 1880

Context

Before Shishkin, it was fashionable to paint Italian and Swiss landscapes. “Even in those rare cases when artists took on the image of Russian areas, Russian nature was Italianized, pulled up to the ideal Italian beauty", - recalled Alexandra Komarova, Shishkin's niece. Ivan Ivanovich was the first who painted Russian nature realistically with such rapture. So that looking at his paintings, a person would say: “There is a Russian spirit, there it smells of Russia.”

Rye. 1878

And now the story of how Shishkin's canvas became a wrapper. Around the same time that “Morning in a Pine Forest” was presented to the public, Julius Geis, the head of the “Einem Partnership”, was brought a candy for testing: a thick layer of almond praline between two wafer plates and glazed chocolate. The confectioner liked the candy. Geis thought about the name. Here his gaze lingered on the reproduction of the painting by Shishkin and Savitsky. And so the idea of ​​\u200b\u200b"Clumsy Bear" appeared.

The wrapper, familiar to everyone, appeared in 1913, it was created by the artist Manuil Andreev. To the plot of Shishkin and Savitsky, he added a frame of fir branches and the stars of Bethlehem - in those years, sweets were the most expensive and desired gift for the Christmas holidays. Over time, the wrapper went through various adjustments, but conceptually remained the same.

The fate of the artist

“Lord, can my son really be a house painter!” - Ivan Shishkin's mother lamented when she realized that she could not convince her son, who decided to become an artist. The boy was terribly afraid of becoming an official. And by the way, it's good that he didn't. The fact is that Shishkin had an uncontrollable craving for drawing. Literally every sheet that was in the hands of Ivan was covered with drawings. Just imagine what the official Shishkin could do with the documents!

Shishkin knew all the botanical details about trees

Ivan Ivanovich studied painting first in Moscow, then in St. Petersburg. Life was hard. The artist Pyotr Neradovsky, whose father studied and lived with Ivan Ivanovich, wrote in his memoirs: “Shishkin was so poor that he often did not have his own boots. To go somewhere out of the house, it happened that he put on his father's boots. On Sundays they went to dinner together at my father's sister's.

Wild in the north. 1891

But everything was forgotten in the summer in the open air. Together with Savrasov and other classmates, they went somewhere outside the city and there they painted sketches from nature. “There, in nature, we really studied ... We studied in nature, and also rested from gypsum,” Shishkin recalled. Even then, he chose the theme of life: “I really love the Russian forest and only write it. The artist needs to choose one thing that he likes the most ... You can’t scatter in any way. By the way, Shishkin learned to masterfully write Russian nature abroad. He studied in the Czech Republic, Germany, Switzerland. Pictures brought from Europe brought the first decent money.

After the death of his wife, brother and son, Shishkin drank for a long time and could not work.

Meanwhile in Russia, the Wanderers protested against the Academicians. Shishkin was incredibly happy about this. In addition, among the rebels, many were friends of Ivan Ivanovich. True, over time, he quarreled with both those and others and was very worried about this.

Shishkin died suddenly. He sat down at the canvas, just about to start work, yawned once. and all. That's exactly what the painter wanted - "instantly, immediately, so as not to suffer." Ivan Ivanovich was 66 years old.

SPECIAL PROJECTS

Over the past century, "Morning in a Pine Forest", which rumor, defying the laws of arithmetic, baptized into "Three Bears", has become the most replicated picture in Russia: Shishkin's bears look at us from candy wrappers, greeting card, wall tapestries and calendars; even of all the cross-stitch kits that are sold in All for Needlework stores, these bears are the most popular.

By the way, what's the morning like here?!

It is known, after all, that this painting was originally called “The Bear Family in the Forest”. And she had two authors - Ivan Shishkin and Konstantin Savitsky: Shishkin painted the forest, but the bears themselves belonged to the brushes of the latter. But Pavel Tretyakov, who bought this painting, ordered that the painting be renamed and only one artist, Ivan Shishkin, be left in all catalogs.

- Why? - with such a question, Tretyakov was overcome for many years.

Only once did Tretyakov explain the motives for his action.

- In the picture, - answered the philanthropist, - everything, from the idea to the execution, speaks of the manner of painting, of the creative method peculiar to Shishkin.

I.I. Shishkin. Morning in a pine forest.

"Bear" - that was the nickname of Ivan Shishkin himself in his youth.

Huge growth, gloomy and silent, Shishkin always tried to stay away from noisy companies and fun, preferring to walk somewhere in the forest all alone.

He was born in January 1832 in the most bearish corner of the empire - in the city of Yelabuga in the then Vyatka province, in the family of the merchant of the first guild Ivan Vasilyevich Shishkin, a local romantic and eccentric, who was fond of not so much grain trade as archaeological research and social activities.

Perhaps that is why Ivan Vasilievich did not scold his son when, after four years of study at the Kazan gymnasium, he quit studying with the firm intention of never returning to study. “Well, I quit and quit,” Shishkin Sr. shrugged his shoulders, “it’s not for everyone to build bureaucratic careers.”

But Ivan was not interested in anything but hiking in the forests. Every time he ran away from home before dawn, but returned after dark. After dinner, he silently locked himself in his room. He had no interest either in women's society, or in the company of his peers, to whom he seemed like a forest savage.

Parents tried to place their son in family business, but Ivan did not express any interest in trade either. Moreover, all merchants deceived and shortchanged him. “Our arithmetic grammarian is idiotic in matters of commerce,” his mother complained in a letter to her eldest son Nikolai.

But then in 1851, Moscow artists appeared in quiet Yelabuga, called to paint the iconostasis in the cathedral church. With one of them - Ivan Osokin - Ivan soon met. It was Osokin who noticed the young man's craving for drawing. He accepted the young Shishkin as an apprentice in an artel, taught him how to prepare and stir paints, and later advised him to go to Moscow and study at the School of Painting and Sculpture at the Moscow Art Society.

I.I. Shishkin. Self-portrait.

Relatives, who had already given up on the undergrowth, even perked up when they learned about their son's desire to become an artist. Especially the father, who dreamed of glorifying the Shishkin family for centuries. Indeed, he believed that famous Shishkin he will become himself - as an amateur archaeologist who unearthed the ancient Devil's settlement near Yelabuga. Therefore, his father allocated money for education, and in 1852, 20-year-old Ivan Shishkin went to conquer Moscow.

It was his comrades at the School of Painting and Sculpture who were sharp-tongued and nicknamed him the Bear.

As his classmate Pyotr Krymov recalled, with whom Shishkin rented a room together in a mansion in Kharitonevsky Lane, “our Bear has already climbed all Sokolniki and painted all the glades.”

However, he went to sketches in Ostankino, and in Sviblovo, and even in the Trinity-Sergius Lavra - Shishkin worked as if tirelessly. Many wondered: in a day he turned out as many sketches as others could hardly do in a week.

In 1855, having brilliantly graduated from the School of Painting, Shishkin decided to enter the Imperial Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg. And although, according to the then ranking table, graduates of the Moscow School actually had the same status as graduates of the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts, Shishkin simply passionately wanted to learn to paint from the best European masters of painting.

Life in the noisy capital of the empire did not change Shishkin's unsociable character at all. As he wrote in letters to his parents, if it were not for the opportunity to study painting with the best craftsmen, he would have returned home long ago, to his native forests.

“Petersburg is tired,” he wrote to his parents in the winter of 1858. - Today we were at Admiralteyskaya Square, where, as you know, the color of the St. Petersburg Shrovetide. It’s all such rubbish, nonsense, vulgarity, and on foot and in carriages the most respectable public, the so-called higher one, flocks to this vulgar mess, to kill part of their boring and idle time and immediately stare at how the lower public is having fun. And we, the people who make up the average audience, right, do not want to watch ... "

And here is another letter written already in the spring: “This incessant thunder of carriages appeared on the cobblestone pavement, at least it doesn’t bother me in winter. Here comes the first day of the holiday, countless people appear on the streets of all Petersburg, cocked hats, helmets, cockades and similar rubbish to make visits. Strange thing, in St. Petersburg every minute you meet either a pot-bellied general, or a pole of an officer, or a crooked official - these personalities are simply countless, you might think that all of Petersburg is full only of them, these animals ... "

The only consolation he finds in the capital is the church. Paradoxically, it was in noisy St. Petersburg, where many people in those years lost not only faith, but also human form, Shishkin just found his way to God.

Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin.

In letters to his parents, he wrote: “We have a church at the Academy in the building itself, and during the service we leave classes, go to church, but in the evening after the class to the vigil, there is no matins. And I’ll tell you with pleasure that it’s so pleasant, so good, as well as possible, like someone who did what, leaves everything, goes, comes back and again does the same thing as before. As the church is good, so the clergy fully respond to it, the priest is a respectable, kind old man, he often visits our classes, he speaks so simply, fascinatingly, so vividly ... "

Shishkin also saw God's will in his studies: he had to prove to the professors of the Academy the right of a Russian artist to paint Russian landscapes. It was not so easy to do this, because at that time the Frenchman Nicolas Poussin and Claude Lorrain were considered luminaries and gods of the landscape genre, who painted either the majestic alpine landscapes or the sultry nature of Greece or Italy. Russian spaces were considered the realm of savagery, unworthy of being depicted on canvas.

Ilya Repin, who studied a little later at the Academy, wrote: “Nature is real, beautiful nature was recognized only in Italy, where there were eternally unattainable samples the highest art. The professors saw it all, studied it, knew it, and led their students to the same goal, to the same unfading ideals…”

I.I. Shishkin. Oak.

But it was not only about ideals.

Starting from the time of Catherine II, foreigners flooded the artistic circles of St. Petersburg: the French and Italians, Germans and Swedes, the Dutch and the British worked on portraits of royal dignitaries and members of the imperial family. Suffice it to recall the Englishman George Doe, the author of the portrait series of heroes Patriotic War 1812, who under Nicholas I was officially appointed the First Artist of the Imperial Court. And while Shishkin was studying at the Academy, the Germans Franz Kruger and Peter von Hess, Johann Schwabe and Rudolf Frentz shone at the court in St. Petersburg, who specialized in depicting high-society amusements - primarily balls and hunting. Moreover, judging by the pictures, the Russian nobles did not hunt at all in the northern forests, but somewhere in the Alpine valleys. And, of course, foreigners, who considered Russia as a colony, tirelessly inspired the St. Petersburg elite with the idea of ​​the natural superiority of everything European over Russian.

However, it was impossible to break Shishkin's stubbornness.

“God showed me this way; the path on which I am now, he leads me along it; and how God will unexpectedly lead to my goal,” he wrote to his parents. “A firm hope in God consoles me in such cases, and involuntarily a shell of dark thoughts is thrown off me…”

Ignoring the criticism of teachers, he continued to paint pictures of Russian forests, honing his drawing technique to perfection.

And he achieved his goal: in 1858, Shishkin received the Great Silver Medal of the Academy of Arts for drawings with a pen and picturesque studies written on the island of Valaam. The following year, Shishkin for the Valaam landscape received gold medal the second dignity, which also gives the right to study abroad at the expense of the state.

I.I. Shishkin. View on the island of Valaam.

Abroad, Shishkin quickly yearned for his homeland.

The Berlin Academy of Arts seemed like a dirty barn. The exhibition in Dresden is the identity of bad taste.

“Out of innocent modesty, we reproach ourselves that we don’t know how to write or we write rudely, tastelessly and not like abroad,” he wrote in his diary. - But, really, as much as we saw here in Berlin - we have much better, of course, I take the general. I have never seen anything more callous and tasteless than painting here at the permanent exhibition - and here there are not only Dresden artists, but from Munich, Zurich, Leipzig and Düsseldorf, more or less all representatives of the great German nation. Of course, we look at them as obsequiously as we look at everything foreign ... So far, from everything that I have seen abroad, nothing has brought me to a stun, as I expected, but, on the contrary, I have become more confident in myself ... »

Neither seduced him mountain views Saxon Switzerland, where he studied with the famous animal painter Rudolf Koller (so, contrary to rumor, Shishkin could draw animals excellently), nor the landscapes of Bohemia with miniature mountains, nor the beauty of old Munich, nor Prague.

“Now I just realized that I didn’t get there,” Shishkin wrote. “Prague is nothing remarkable, and its surroundings are also poor.”

I.I. Shishkin. Village near Prague. Watercolor.

Only the ancient Teutoburg forest with centuries-old oaks, still remembering the time of the invasion of the Roman legions, briefly captivated his imagination.

The more he traveled around Europe, the more he wanted to return to Russia.

From longing, he even once got into a very unpleasant story. Once he was sitting in a Munich pub, having drunk about a liter of Moselle wine. And he didn’t share something with a company of tipsy Germans who began to let go of rude ridicule about Russia and Russians. Ivan Ivanovich, without waiting for any explanation or apology from the Germans, got into a fight and, as witnesses claimed, with bare hands knocked out seven Germans. As a result, the artist got into the police, and the case could take a very serious turn. But Shishkin was acquitted: the artist, after all, the judges considered, was a vulnerable soul. And this turned out to be almost his only positive impression of the European trip.

But at the same time, thanks to the experience gained in Europe, Shishkin was able to become in Russia what he became.

In 1841, an event took place in London that was not immediately appreciated by contemporaries: the American John Goff Rand received a patent for a tin tube for storing paint, wrapped at one end and twisted with a cap from the other. It was a prototype of the current tubes, in which today not only paint is packed, but also a lot of useful things: cream, toothpaste, food for astronauts.

What could be more common than a tube?

Perhaps it is difficult for us today to even imagine how this invention made life easier for artists. Now everyone can easily and quickly become a painter: go to the store, buy a primed canvas, brushes and a set of acrylic or oil paints- and please, draw as much as you like! In the old days, artists prepared their own paints, buying dry pigments in powder from merchants, and then patiently mixing the powder with oil. But in the time of Leonardo da Vinci, artists themselves prepared coloring pigments, which was an extremely time-consuming process. And, for example, the process of soaking crushed lead in acetic acid to make white paint took the lion's share of the painters' working time, which is why, by the way, the paintings of the old masters were so dark, the artists tried to save on whitewash.

But even mixing paints based on semi-finished pigments took a lot of time and effort. Many painters recruited students to prepare paints for work. Ready-made paints were stored in hermetically sealed clay pots and bowls. It is clear that with a set of pots and jugs for oil, it was impossible to go to the open air, that is, to paint landscapes from nature.

I.I. Shishkin. Forest.

And this was another reason why the Russian landscape could not be recognized in Russian art: painters simply redrawn landscapes from paintings by European masters, not being able to draw from life.

Of course, the reader may object: if an artist cannot paint from nature, then why couldn't they draw from memory? Or just make it all out of your head?

But drawing "from the head" was completely unacceptable for graduates of the Imperial Academy of Arts.

Ilya Repin has a curious episode in his memoirs, illustrating the importance of Shishkin's attitude to the truth of life.

“On my largest canvas, I began to paint rafts. Along the wide Volga, a whole string of rafts walked straight at the viewer, the artist wrote. - Ivan Shishkin, to whom I showed this picture, prompted me to destroy this picture.

- Well, what did you mean by that! And most importantly: after all, you didn’t write this from sketches from nature ?! Can you see it now.

No, I imagined...

- That's what it is. Imagined! After all, these logs in the water ... It should be clear: which logs - spruce, pine? And then what, some kind of "stoerosovye"! Ha ha! There is an impression, but it is not serious ... "

The word "not serious" sounded like a sentence, and Repin destroyed the painting.

Shishkin himself, who did not have the opportunity to paint sketches in the forest with paints from nature, made sketches with a pencil and pen during walks, achieving a filigree drawing technique. Actually, in Western Europe it was his forest sketches made in pen and ink that were always valued. Shishkin also brilliantly painted with watercolors.

Of course, Shishkin was far from the first artist who dreamed of painting large canvases with Russian landscapes. But how to move the workshop to the forest or to the river bank? The artists did not have an answer to this question. Some of them built temporary workshops (for example, Surikov and Aivazovsky), but moving such workshops from place to place was too expensive and troublesome even for eminent painters.

We also tried to pack ready-made mixed paints in pork bladders that were tied in a knot. Then they pierced the bubble with a needle to squeeze out some paint onto the palette, and the resulting hole was plugged with a nail. But more often than not, the bubbles just burst along the way.

And suddenly there are strong and light tubes with liquid paints that you could carry with you - just squeeze a little onto the palette and draw. Moreover, the colors themselves have become brighter and juicier.

Next came the easel, that is, a portable box with paints and a canvas stand that you could carry with you.

Of course, not all artists could lift the first easels, but Shishkin's bearish strength came in handy here.

The return of Shishkin to Russia with new colors and new painting technologies caused a sensation.

Ivan Ivanovich did not just fit into fashion - no, he himself became a trendsetter in artistic fashion, not only in St. Petersburg, but also in Western Europe: his works become a discovery at the Paris World Exhibition, receive flattering reviews at an exhibition in Dusseldorf, which, however, no wonder, because the French and Germans are no less tired of the "classic" Italian landscapes than the Russians.

At the Academy of Arts, he receives the title of professor. Moreover, at the request Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna Shishkin was introduced to Stanislav 3rd degree.

Also, a special landscape class is being opened at the Academy, and Ivan Ivanovich has both a stable income and students. Moreover, the very first student - Fedor Vasiliev - in a short time achieves universal recognition.

There were changes in Shishkin's personal life: he married Evgenia Alexandrovna Vasilyeva - sister his student. Soon the newlyweds had a daughter, Lydia, followed by sons Vladimir and Konstantin.

Evgenia Shishkina, Shishkin's first wife.

“In character, Ivan Ivanovich was born a family man; away from his people, he was never calm, almost could not work, it always seemed to him that someone was certainly sick at home, something happened, wrote the first biographer of the artist Natalya Komarova. - In the external arrangement of domestic life, he had no rivals, creating a comfortable and beautiful environment from almost nothing; he was terribly tired of wandering around the furnished rooms, and he devoted himself wholeheartedly to his family and his household. For his children, this was the most tender loving father, especially when the children were small. Evgenia Alexandrovna was simple and good woman, and the years of her life with Ivan Ivanovich passed in quiet and peaceful work. The funds already allowed him to have modest comfort, although with an ever-increasing family, Ivan Ivanovich could not afford anything superfluous. He had many acquaintances, comrades often gathered to them and games were arranged between times, and Ivan Ivanovich was the most hospitable host and the soul of society.

He has especially warm relations with the founders of the Association of Travelers art exhibitions artists Ivan Kramskoy and Konstantin Savitsky. For the summer, the three of them rented a spacious house in the village of Ilzho on the shores of Lake Ilzhovsky not far from St. Petersburg. From early morning, Kramskoy locked himself in the studio, working on "Christ in the Desert", and Shishkin and Savitsky usually went to sketches, climbing into the very depths of the forest, into the thicket.

Shishkin approached the matter very responsibly: he searched for a place for a long time, then began to clear the bushes, chopped off the branches so that nothing would prevent him from seeing the landscape he liked, made a seat out of branches and moss, strengthened the easel and got to work.

Savitsky - an early orphaned nobleman from Bialystok - fell in love with Ivan Ivanovich. Sociable person, lover of long walks, practically knowing life He knew how to listen, he knew how to speak himself. There was a lot in common in them, and therefore both reached out to each other. Savitsky even became the godfather of the artist's youngest son, also Konstantin.

During such a summer suffering, Kramskoy wrote the most famous portrait Shishkina: not an artist, but a gold digger in the wilds of the Amazon - in a fashionable cowboy hat, English breeches and light leather boots with iron heels. In his hands is an alpenstock, a sketchbook, a box of paints, a folding chair, an umbrella from the sun's rays hang casually on his shoulder - in a word, all the equipment.

- Not just a Bear, but a real owner of the forest! Kramskoy exclaimed.

It was Shishkin's last happy summer.

Kramskoy. Portrait of I. I. Shishkin.

First came a telegram from Yelabuga: “This morning Father Ivan Vasilyevich Shishkin died. I take it upon myself to inform you."

Then little Volodya Shishkin died. Yevgenia Alexandrovna turned black with grief and took to her bed.

“Shishkin has been biting his nails for three months and nothing more,” wrote Kramskoy in November 1873. - His wife is ill in the old way ... "

Then the blows of fate rained down one after another. A telegram came from Yalta about the death of Fyodor Vasiliev, and Evgenia Alexandrovna died next.

In a letter to a friend Savitsky, Kramskoy wrote: “E.A. Shishkina ordered to live long. She died last Wednesday, on the night of Thursday from 5 to 6 March. On Saturday we saw her off. Soon. More than I thought. But that's to be expected."

Finally, he died and younger son Konstantin.

Ivan Ivanovich became not himself. I didn’t hear what my relatives were saying, I didn’t find a place for myself either at home or in the workshop, even endless wanderings in the forest could not ease the pain of loss. Every day he went to visit his native graves, and then, after returning home after dark, he drank cheap wine to the point of complete unconsciousness.

Friends were afraid to come to him - they knew that Shishkin, being out of his mind, could well rush at uninvited guests with his fists. The only one who could console him was Savitsky, but he drank alone in Paris, mourning the death of his wife Ekaterina Ivanovna, who either committed suicide or died in an accident, poisoned by carbon monoxide.

Savitsky himself was close to suicide. Perhaps only the misfortune that happened to his friend in St. Petersburg could stop him from an irreparable act.

Only a few years later Shishkin found the pitchfork to return to painting.

He painted the painting "Rye" - especially for the VI Traveling Exhibition. A huge field, which he sketched somewhere near Yelabuga, became for him the embodiment of his father’s words, read in one of the old letters: “Death lies with a man, then judgment, that if a man sows in life, he will reap.”

In the background are mighty pine trees and - as an eternal reminder of death, which is always nearby - a huge withered tree.

At the traveling exhibition of 1878, "Rye" admittedly took first place.

I.I. Shishkin. Rye.

In the same year, he met the young artist Olga Lagoda. The daughter of a real state councilor and courtier, she was one of the first thirty women admitted to study by volunteers at the Imperial Academy of Arts. Olga fell into Shishkin's class, and the eternally gloomy and shaggy Ivan Ivanovich, who, moreover, grew a shaggy Old Testament beard, suddenly discovered with surprise that at the sight of this short girl with bottomless blue eyes and bangs of chestnut hair, his heart begins to beat a little stronger than usual, and hands suddenly begin to sweat, like a snotty high school student.

Ivan Ivanovich proposed, and in 1880 he and Olga got married. Soon the daughter Xenia was born. Happy Shishkin ran around the house and sang, sweeping away everything in his path.

And a month and a half after giving birth, Olga Antonovna died of inflammation of the peritoneum.

No, Shishkin did not drink this time. He threw himself into work, trying to provide everything necessary for his two daughters, who were left without mothers.

Not giving himself the opportunity to become limp, finishing one picture, he stretched the canvas on a stretcher for the next. He began to engage in etching, mastered the technique of engraving, illustrated books.

- Work! - said Ivan Ivanovich. – Work every day, going to this job as if it were a service. There is nothing to wait for the notorious "inspiration" ... Inspiration is the work itself!

In the summer of 1888, they again rested “like a family” with Konstantin Savitsky. Ivan Ivanovich - with two daughters, Konstantin Apollonovich - with his new wife Elena and little son George.

And so Savitsky sketched a comic drawing for Ksenia Shishkina: a mother bear watches her three cubs play. Moreover, two kids carelessly chase each other, and one - the so-called one-year-old foster bear - looks somewhere in the thicket of the forest, as if waiting for someone ...

Shishkin, who saw his friend's drawing, could not take his eyes off the cubs for a long time.

What was he thinking? Perhaps the artist remembered that the pagan Votyaks, who still lived in the wilds of the forest near Yelabuga, believed that bears were the closest relatives of people, that it was into bears that the early dead sinless souls of children pass.

And if he himself was called the Bear, then this is his entire bear family: the bear is the wife of Evgeny Alexandrovna, and the cubs are Volodya and Kostya, and next to them stands the bear Olga Antonovna and is waiting for him to come himself - the Bear and the king of the forest ...

“These bears need to be given a good background,” he finally suggested to Savitsky. - And I know what needs to be written here ... Let's work for a couple: I will write the forest, and you - the bears, they turned out to be very alive ...

And then Ivan Ivanovich made a pencil sketch future picture, remembering how on the island of Gorodomlya, on Lake Seliger, he saw mighty pine trees that a hurricane had uprooted and broken in half - like matches. Those who have seen such a catastrophe themselves will easily understand: the very sight of forest giants torn to pieces causes people to be taken aback and afraid, and at the place where the trees fell in the fabric of the forest, a strange empty space- such a defiant emptiness that nature itself does not tolerate, but still has to endure; the same unhealed emptiness after the death of loved ones formed in the heart of Ivan Ivanovich.

Mentally remove the bears from the picture, and you will see the scope of the catastrophe that happened in the forest, which happened quite recently, judging by the yellowed pine needles and the fresh color of the wood at the place of breaking. But there were no other reminders of the storm. Now the soft golden light of God’s grace is pouring from heaven into the forest, in which His cub angels are bathing ...

The painting "The Bear Family in the Forest" was first presented to the public at the XVII Traveling Exhibition in April 1889, and on the eve of the exhibition, the painting was bought by Pavel Tretyakov for 4 thousand rubles. Of this amount, Ivan Ivanovich gave his co-author a fourth part - a thousand rubles, which caused resentment in his old friend: he counted on a fairer assessment of his contribution to the picture.

I.I. Shishkin. Morning in a pine forest. Etude.

Savitsky wrote to his relatives: “I don’t remember if we wrote to you that I was not completely absent from the exhibition. I once started a picture with bears in the forest, I took a fancy to it. I.I. Sh-n took over the execution of the landscape. The painting danced, and Tretyakov found a buyer. Thus we killed the bear and divided the skin! But this carve-up happened with some curious hesitations. So curious and unexpected that I even refused any participation in this picture, it is exhibited under the name of Sh-na and is listed as such in the catalog.

It turns out that questions of such a delicate nature cannot be concealed in a sack, courts and gossip began, and I had to sign the picture with Sh., and then divide the actual trophies of purchase and sale. The painting was sold for 4 tons, and I am a participant in the 4th share! I carry a lot of bad things in my heart on this issue, and out of joy and pleasure, something opposite happened.

I am writing to you about this because I am used to keeping my heart open to you, but you, Dear friends, you understand that this whole matter is of an extremely delicate nature, and therefore it is necessary that all this be completely secret for everyone with whom I would not want to talk.

However, later Savitsky found the strength to reconcile with Shishkin, although they no longer worked together and no longer rested with their families: soon Konstantin Apollonovich and his wife and children moved to live in Penza, where he was offered the position of director of the newly opened Art School.

When in May 1889 the XVII Traveling Exhibition moved to the halls of the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, Tretyakov saw that The Bear Family in the Forest was already hanging with two signatures.

Pavel Mikhailovich was, to put it mildly, surprised: he bought a painting from Shishkin. But the very fact of the presence next to the great Shishkin of the name of the “mediocre” Savitsky automatically reduced market value pictures, and reduced decently. Judge for yourself: Tretyakov bought a painting in which the world-famous misanthrope Shishkin, who almost never painted people and animals, suddenly became an animal painter and depicted four animals. And not just any cows, seals or dogs, but ferocious “owners of the forest”, which - any hunter will confirm this to you - is very difficult to portray from nature, because the she-bear will tear to shreds anyone who dares to approach her cubs. But all of Russia knows that Shishkin paints only from life, and, therefore, the painter saw the bear family in the forest as clearly as he painted on canvas. And now it turns out that it was not Shishkin himself who painted the she-bear with cubs, but “something there” Savitsky, who, as Tretyakov himself believed, did not know how to work with color at all - all his canvases turned out to be deliberately bright, then somehow earthy -gray. But both of them were completely flat, like popular prints, while Shishkin's paintings had volume and depth.

Probably, Shishkin himself was of the same opinion, inviting a friend to participate only because of his idea.

That is why Tretyakov ordered Savitsky's signature to be erased with turpentine so as not to belittle Shishkin. And in general, he renamed the painting itself - they say, it’s not about the bears at all, but about that magical golden light that seems to flood the whole picture.

But the folk painting "Three Bears" had two more co-authors, whose names remained in history, although they do not appear in any exhibition and art catalog.

One of them is Julius Geis, one of the founders and leaders of the Einem Partnership (later the Krasny Oktyabr confectionery factory). At the Einem factory, among all other candies and chocolates, thematic sets of sweets were also produced - for example, “Treasures of the earth and sea”, “Vehicles”, “Types of peoples the globe". Or, for example, a set of cookies "Moscow of the Future": in each box one could find a postcard with futuristic drawings about Moscow in the 23rd century. Julius Geis also decided to release a series of "Russian Artists and Their Paintings" and agreed with Tretyakov, having received permission to place reproductions of paintings from his gallery on the wrappers. One of the most delicious sweets, made from a thick layer of almond praline sandwiched between two waffle plates and covered with a thick layer of glazed chocolate, and received a wrapper with a painting by Shishkin.

Candy wrapper.

Soon the release of this series was stopped, but the candy with bears, called "Bear-toed Bear", began to be produced as a separate product.

In 1913, the artist Manuil Andreev redrawn the picture: to the plot of Shishkin and Savitsky, he added a frame of fir branches and Bethlehem stars, because in those years the “Bear” for some reason was considered the most expensive and desired gift for Christmas holidays.

Surprisingly, this wrapper survived all the wars and revolutions of the tragic twentieth century. Moreover, in Soviet time"Mishka" became the most expensive delicacy: in the 1920s, a kilogram of sweets was sold for four rubles. The candy even had a slogan, which was composed by Vladimir Mayakovsky himself: “If you want to eat “Mishka”, get yourself a passbook!”.

Very soon, the candy received a new name in popular life - "Three Bears". At the same time, Ivan Shishkin’s painting began to be called that, reproductions of which, cut out from the Ogonyok magazine, soon appeared in every Soviet house - either as a manifesto of a comfortable bourgeois life that despised Soviet reality, or as a reminder that sooner or later, but any the storm will pass.

Editor's Choice