Landscape painter Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin. Ivan Shishkin

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Among the early graphic works of Shishkin, an interesting sheet, executed in 1853, with twenty-nine landscape sketches, most of which are outlined. Shishkin is clearly looking for motives worthy of a picture. However, all his sketches are extremely simple - a pine tree near the water, a bush on a swampy plain, a river bank. And this is already showing the originality of the artist. His niece A. T. Komarova later said: “Little by little, the whole school learned that Shishkin draws views that no one had ever painted before him: just a field, a forest, a river, and they come out of him as beautifully as Swiss kinds".

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

By the time he graduated from the school at the very beginning of 1856, the creative interests of Shishkin, who stood out among his comrades for his outstanding talent, were noticeably defined. As a landscape painter, he has already acquired some professional skills. But the artist strove for further improvement and in January 1856 he went to St. Petersburg to enter the Academy of Arts. Since then, Shishkin's creative biography has been closely connected with the capital, where he lived until the end of his days.

Thanks to the love and care of his leader - A. N. Mokritsky, the connection with the first art school continued to be preserved for a long time in the thoughts and soul of the novice artist. Admitted without much trouble to the Academy of Arts in the year of graduating from an art school, Shishkin at the same time turns more than once for advice to Mokritsky and willingly introduces him into the circle of his studies, successes and difficulties.

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

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

Studying at the Academy of Arts with the mediocre painter Socrates Vorobyov added almost nothing to the knowledge gained at the School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. Academism, with the passage of time, turning the once lively and progressive art into a sclerotic canon, was also inherent in the Russian academy, whose life was under the heavy pressure of bureaucratization of art education by bureaucrats.

Shishkin, during his studies at the Academy of Arts, showed symptoms of imitation less than others, but some influences also touched him. This applies primarily to the work of the once extremely popular Swiss landscape painter A. Kalam, an artist who was not profound, but who lovingly studied alpine nature, who knew how to poeticize it outwardly. Copies from the works of Kalam were obligatory in the educational practice not only of the Academy, but also of the Moscow School. Assessing the influence of A. Kalam on the manner of writing a young artist A. Mokritsky writes to Shishkin in St. Petersburg on March 26, 1860, he writes: “I remember. You told me that in the way and manner of drawing your drawings resemble Kalam - I don’t see; in your manner has something of its own... This shows that there is no need to imitate the manner of this or that master.Manner is the most external side of a work of art and is closely related to the personality of the artist-author and the way and degree of his understanding of the subject and possession of the technique of art.In this respect only one thing is important that the artist peep, so to speak, this manner in nature itself, and not acquire it unconsciously.

The works of the young Shishkin, created during the years of study at the Academy, are marked by romantic features, but that was rather a tribute to the dominant tradition. A sober, calmly thoughtful attitude to nature was becoming more and more evident in him. He approached her not only as an artist passionate about beauty, but also as a researcher studying her forms.

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

The study "Pine on Valaam" - one of eight awarded a silver medal in 1858 - gives an idea of ​​the artist's enthusiasm for depicting nature, and of the characteristic property of Shishkin's talent that began to manifest itself at that time - a meaningful perception of nature. Carefully writing out a tall, slender, beautiful pine tree in its contour, Shishkin conveys the severity of the surrounding area in a number of characteristic details. One of these details - an old rickety cross leaning against a pine tree - creates a certain elegiac mood.

In nature itself, Shishkin is looking for such motives that would allow her to reveal it in objective significance, and tries to reproduce them at the level of pictorial completeness, which can be clearly seen from another sketch of the same series - "View on the island of Valaam" (1858) . The conventionality and some decorativeness of the color solution coexist here with a careful elaboration of details, with that close scrutiny of nature, which will become a hallmark of all further work of the master. The artist is fascinated not only by the beauty of the view that opened before him, but also by the variety of natural forms. He tried to convey them as concretely as possible. This sketch, rather dry in painting, but testifying to a good command of drawing, formed the basis of Shishkin's competition painting "View on the island of Valaam. The area of ​​Kukko", shown at the academic exhibition of 1860 and awarded the Big Gold Medal. She was previously in the United States, and in 1986 ended up at an auction in London. Her fate is currently unknown.

After graduating from the Academy with a Grand Gold Medal in 1860, Shishkin received the right to travel abroad as a pensioner.

His path to the stylistic features of his work was far from easy, since a strong connection with the Academy and its aesthetic principles still affected his formation as a landscape painter. Outwardly, it continued to be preserved even after Shishkin returned from abroad, where he left in 1862 as a pensioner of the Academy. Manifested mainly in his successful performances at the academic exhibition of 1865 with the painting "View in the vicinity of Dusseldorf" (State Russian Museum) and later, in 1867, with the same work at the Paris World Exhibition, and a year later again at the academic exhibition, Shishkin Outwardly, it turns out to be in the sight of the academic authorities and is even awarded the Order of Stanislav III degree.

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

The situation in which Shishkin found himself in the second half of the sixties upon his return from abroad could also be observed in the creative life of other landscape painters. The awareness of the importance of new tasks was ahead of the possibilities of their solution. The very era of the 60s put forward fundamentally new important tasks for art and the artist, and life at every step opened before him a rich, complex world of phenomena that required a radical break in the conditional and impoverished methods of the academic system of painting, devoid of a living relationship to nature and a sense of artistic truth.

The first signs of internal dissatisfaction with his position, and possibly with the established pictorial method, manifested themselves very clearly in Shishkin the very next year upon his return from abroad. He spends the summer of 1866 in Moscow and works in Bratsevo together with L. L. Kamenev, his friend at the Moscow School of Painting and Sculpture. Collaboration with the landscape painter of the Moscow school, sincerely fascinated by the motifs of the flat Russian landscape, does not pass without a trace. In addition to the bright Shishkin drawings that have come down to us with the signature "Brattsevo", free from the constraint of his academic manner, the main thing, of course, was the picturesque sketches he performed, in one of which the motif of a ripening rye field and a road was captured, which served later, in 1869 the basis for the painting "Noon. In the vicinity of Moscow" (State Tretyakov Gallery), with golden fields of ripening rye, specifically inscribed in the background, a road coming from the depths, and a high sky stretched above the ground with light cumulus clouds. The presence of the picture in no way detracts from the independent artistic value of the study performed in nature with a particularly successful painting of the sky with clouds silvery at the edges, illuminated from the depths by the sun.

Representing a typical Central Russian plain landscape, the picture at the same time shows its content and the theme of folk life figuratively expressed through the landscape. Completing the sixties and the path of perestroika, it simultaneously becomes an application for the future work of the artist, although for the most part devoted to the motifs of the forest landscape, but in essence its imagery is close to the same healthy folk basis.

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

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

To determine the "face" of the landscape, Shishkin preferred the coniferous forest, which is most characteristic of the northern regions of Russia. Shishkin strove to depict the forest in a "scientific way" so that the species of trees could be guessed. But this seemingly protocol fixation contained its own poetry of the infinite originality of the life of a tree. In "The Cutting of the Forest" this can be seen from the elastic roundness of the sawn spruce, which seems to be a slender antique column crushed by the barbarians. The slender pines on the left side of the picture are tactfully painted with the light of the fading day. The subject plan, beloved by the artist, with ferns, lush grass, damp earth torn apart by rhizomes, an animal in the foreground and a fly agaric, contrasting with the solemn and echoing forest - all this inspires a feeling of rapture with the beauty of the material life of nature, the energy of forest growth. The compositional construction of the picture is devoid of static - the verticals of the forest intersect, are cut diagonally by a stream, fallen fir trees and growing "irritably" tilted aspens and birch trees.

In the summer of 1868, Shishkin left for his homeland, in Yelabuga, to receive his father's blessing for a wedding with Evgenia Alexandrovna Vasilyeva, the artist's sister.

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

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

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

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

Shishkin's works show how his creative tasks expanded and how this genuine democrat artist wanted to express in the images of Russian nature the best people's ideals and aspirations, for the implementation of which representatives of the entire advanced democratic culture fought at that time.

In the summer of 1871, Shishkin lived at home. At the beginning of 1872, at a competition organized by the Society for the Encouragement of Arts in St. Petersburg, Shishkin presented the painting "Mast Forest in the Vyatka Province". The title alone makes it possible to associate this work with the nature of the native land, and the time of collecting the material - with the summer of 1871.

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

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

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

In 1872, in letters to Vasilyev from near Luga (where Kramskoy and Shishkin lived together), Kramskoy often wrote about studies in sketches. “It’s better for me to tell you instead of reasoning what we are doing here,” he writes to Vasiliev on August 20. “Firstly, Shishkin is getting younger, that is, growing. Seriously ... And as for sketches, I will report to you - just anywhere , and as I wrote to you, perfected in color."

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

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

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

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

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

In some works, the artist achieves a high poetic generalization while maintaining the same thoroughness in the transfer of details. For the seventies, such a picture was "Rye" (1878).

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

The picture was painted after the artist made a trip to Yelabuga in 1877. Throughout his life, he constantly came to his father's land, where he seemed to draw new creative forces. The motif found at home, captured in one of the pencil sketches with a laconic author's inscription: "This", formed the basis of the picture.

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

All rye around, like steppe, alive,

No castles, no seas, no mountains.

Thank you dear side

For your healing space.

So Nekrasov wrote after returning from abroad in the poem "Silence".

Ripe rye, filling the picture with a golden tint, with ears of roaring, swaying from the wind, spilled around like an endless sea. As if from under the feet of the viewer, a field path runs forward, meandering and hiding behind a wall of rye. The motive of the road, as if symbolizing the difficult and mournful path of the people among the artists of the accusatory direction, acquires a completely different, joyful sound from Shishkin. This is a bright, "hospitable" road, calling and alluring into the distance.

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

The painting "Rye" ends in the seventies with the conquests of Shishkin, a landscape painter of an epic warehouse. In the context of Russian landscape painting of the second half of the 19th century, the picture has the significance of a milestone work that best expressed the path of the Wanderer landscape in that period, in which a specific national image of Russian nature acquired a special social significance. The problem of asserting positive ideals, which had matured in the art of critical realism, found the most complete solution in this genre in the painting "Rye".

In the seventies, there was a rapid process of development of landscape painting, enriching it with new talents. Next to Shishkin, A. I. Kuindzhi exhibits his eight famous paintings at five traveling exhibitions, developing a completely unusual pictorial system. The artistic images created by Shishkin and Kuindzhi, their creative methods, techniques, as well as the teaching system later, differed sharply, which did not detract from the dignity of each of them. While Shishkin was characterized by a calm contemplation of nature in all its ordinary manifestations, Kuindzhi had a romantic perception of it, he was mainly fascinated by the effects of lighting and the color contrasts caused by them. Coloristic saturation and bold generalizations of forms allowed him to achieve special persuasiveness in solving the difficult task of maximum approximation to the real power of color in nature and determined the decorative elements inherent in his works. In solving color problems, Shishkin was inferior to Kuindzhi, but on the other hand he was stronger than him as a draftsman. It is characteristic that Kuindzhi, who depicted, as a rule, natural phenomena that could not be studied for a long time, did without preliminary natural studies, while Shishkin considered them to be the fundamental principle of the creative process.

Along with Kuindzhi, in the late seventies, V. D. Polenov, the author of the remarkable plein-air genre and landscape paintings "Moscow Courtyard" and "Grandmother's Garden", performed. In 1879, after a three-year hiatus, for the penultimate time, two landscapes by Savrasov are exhibited, in whose work there are features that foreshadow the impending decline. And at the Moscow student exhibition of 1879/80, a lyrical picture of the young I. I. Levitan, who studied in Savrasov's class, appeared "Autumn Day. Sokolniki".

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

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

Advances in coloring were achieved by Shishkin primarily and to the greatest extent in sketches, in the process of direct communication with nature. It is no coincidence that Shishkin's friends, the Wanderers, found his sketches no less interesting than his paintings, and sometimes even more fresh and colorful. Meanwhile, in addition to "Pine Trees Illuminated by the Sun" and the juicy, extremely expressive landscape "Oaks. Evening", many of Shishkin's excellent sketches of the best times of his work are hardly mentioned in art history literature. These include "Corner of an overgrown garden. Gout-grass" (1884), "Forest (Shmetsk near Narva)", "Off the coast of the Gulf of Finland (Udrias near Narva)" (both 1888), "On sandy ground. Meri- Hovi on the Finnish Railway" (1889, 90?), "Young Pines at the Sandy Cliff. Meri-Hovi on the Finnish Railway" (1890) and a number of others. All of them are distinguished by a heightened sense of the form and texture of objects, a fine gradation of nearby shades of color, freedom and variety of painting techniques while maintaining a strict, realistically accurate drawing. By the way, the latter is clearly revealed by the study of Shishkin's works in infrared light. The clear drawing underlying the artist's works is an essential feature that makes it possible to distinguish the true works of the master.

Numerous sketches by Shishkin, on which he worked especially enthusiastically at the time of his creative flourishing, testify to his sensitivity to the development trends of Russian art in the last decades of the 19th century, when interest in sketch-type works as a special pictorial form is growing.

In 1885, V. D. Polenov exhibited ninety-seven studies brought from a trip to the East at a traveling exhibition. Shishkin first performed with a group of sketches in 1880, showing twelve Crimean landscapes. Over the course of all subsequent years, he repeatedly demonstrated sketches, which he treated as independent finished works of art. And the fact that Shishkin showed not paintings, but sketches at his personal exhibitions, allows us to judge how fundamentally important this area of ​​\u200b\u200bartistic activity was for him.

Some of Shishkin's sketches were acquired by P. M. Tretyakov shortly after their completion. These include the landscape "Apiary" (1882) with blue cloudy skies and beautifully developed dark greenery. It is much more picturesque compared to the 1876 painting "Apiary in the Forest", similar in motive. The artist brought the beehives and thatched shed closer to the viewer, shortened the detailed story and achieved a large capacity and integrity of the artistic image.

In the 1980s and 1990s, the artist was increasingly attracted to the changing states of nature, the quickly passing moments. Thanks to his interest in the light-air medium, in color, he now succeeds more than before in such works. An example of this is the painting Misty Morning (1885), poetic in motive and harmonious in painting. As often happened with the artist, the motive that captivated him varies in several works. In 1888, Shishkin wrote "Fog in a Pine Forest" and at the same time, apparently, the sketch "Krestovsky Island in the Fog", in 1889 - "Morning in a Pine Forest" and "Fog", in 1890 - again "Fog" and, finally, "Foggy Morning" (a landscape exhibited at the twenty-fifth traveling exhibition).

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

The entertaining genre motif introduced into the picture contributed greatly to its popularity, but the true value of the work was the beautifully expressed state of nature. This is not just a deaf pine forest, but it is morning in the forest with its fog that has not yet dissipated, with the tops of huge pines that have slightly turned pink, cold shadows in the thickets. One feels the depth of the ravine, wilderness. The presence of a bear family, located on the edge of this ravine, gives the viewer a feeling of remoteness and deafness of a wild forest.

At the turn of the eighties and nineties, Shishkin turned to the relatively rare theme of the winter numbness of nature for him and painted a large painting "Winter" (1890), setting in it the difficult task of conveying barely noticeable reflexes and almost monochrome painting. Everything is frost-bound and immersed in shade. Only in the depths a ray of the sun illuminated the clearing, slightly coloring it in a pinkish tone. From this, the snow, lying in a thick layer on the ground, seems even bluer on the branches of pines. Only the powerful trunks of huge trees darkening against its background and a bird on a branch bring a sense of life.

And in the nineties, in a difficult period for the Association of Traveling Art Exhibitions, marked by crisis phenomena in the work of many artists of the older generation and disagreements arising among the Wanderers, threatening the collapse of the entire organization, Shishkin remained with those who remained faithful to the democratic ideals of the sixties. A follower of Kramskoy, a staunch supporter of the educational, ideological and artistic program of the Wanderers, who actively participated with his work in its implementation, he proudly wrote in 1896: "It's nice to remember the time when we, as beginners, laid the first timid steps for a traveling exhibition And out of these timid but firmly planned steps, a whole path and a glorious path has developed, a path that can be safely proud of.The idea, organization, meaning, goal and aspirations of the Partnership have created for it an honorable place, if only not the main one, in the environment of Russian art.

On the eve of the 20th century, when various currents and directions arise, the search for new artistic styles, forms and techniques is underway, Shishkin continues to confidently follow his once chosen path, creating vitally truthful, meaningful and typical images of Russian nature. A worthy conclusion to his integral and original work was the painting "Ship Grove" (1898) - a canvas that is classical in its completeness and versatility of the artistic image, the perfection of the composition.

This landscape was based on nature sketches made by Shishkin in his native Kama forests, where he found his ideal - a synthesis of harmony and grandeur. But the work also embodies the deepest knowledge of Russian nature, which was accumulated by the master over almost half a century of creative life. A draft version, kept in the State Russian Museum, has the author's inscription: "Ship Afonasovskaya grove near Yelabuga". The fact that the artist, when creating a picture, was based on living, concrete impressions, gives it a special persuasiveness. Powerful trunks of centuries-old pines illuminated by the sun are highlighted in the center. Dense crowns cast a shadow on them. In the distance - permeated with warm light, as if inviting to itself, the space of the forest. Cutting off the tops of the trees with a frame (a technique often found in Shishkin), he enhances the impression of the hugeness of the trees, which seem to lack space on the canvas. Magnificent slender pines are given in all their plastic beauty. Their scaly bark is painted using many colors. Shishkin was and remained to the end an unsurpassed connoisseur of wood, an artist who had no rivals in depicting a coniferous forest.

As always, he slowly tells about the life of this forest on a fine summer day. Emerald grass and grayish greenery of milkweed descend to a shallow stream running over stones and sand. A fence thrown over it speaks of the close presence of a person. Two fluttering yellow butterflies above the water, greenish reflections in it, slightly bluish reflections from the sky, sliding lilac shadows on the trunks bring a quivering joy of being, without disturbing the impression of peace poured in nature. The clearing on the right is beautifully written with grass turned brown from the sun, dry soil and young growth saturated in color. A variety of strokes that reveal the shape and texture emphasize the softness of the grass, the fluffiness of the needles, and the strength of the trunks. Richly nuanced color. In everything one can feel the refined craftsmanship, the confident hand of the artist.

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

Together with a group of indigenous Wanderers - the founders and leaders of the Partnership - Shishkin went a long and glorious path. But in the fine arts of the late 19th century, there was already a different alignment of artistic forces than before. In the work of young painters, the desire for new means of artistic expression grew, the search for other figurative solutions intensified. Then, among some older artists, a clear intolerance began to be revealed towards those representatives of the new generation who tried to move away from the established traditions of the Wanderers. In this retreat, some older Wanderers saw not a natural desire for young people to search for new solutions, to continuously move forward, but a retreat from the glorious achievements of the previous generation in its difficult struggle against obsolete academicism. In the past, they themselves were innovators; now they did not recognize the innovations of talented youth. But the perception by artists of the older generation of the work of the young is the touchstone on which an understanding of the ways of development of art is revealed.

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

Among young artists, Shishkin enjoyed well-deserved respect, despite the fact that he professed different aesthetic principles and adhered to a different artistic system. The youth could not but recognize in him the deepest connoisseur and thoughtful portrayer of Russian nature, could not but appreciate his high skill. Sketches, drawings, etchings by Shishkin were that visual "living school" that Kramskoy spoke of at one time. The same school for beginning artists, of course, was Shishkin himself, his experience, his knowledge, his direct studies with them.

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

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

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

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

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

(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 the Russian landscape." However, his art was perceived differently. Some critics called Shishkin an artist-photographer, meaning by this the limitation of the spiritual principle in his work.

At the end of his life, the artist completely experienced an unfriendly attitude not only to his art, but also to himself personally, which hastened his death. However, time 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 the utmost clarity.

Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin was born in the ancient Russian city of Yelabuga into a merchant family. His father, Ivan Vasilievich, was deeply respected by his fellow countrymen. He himself traded in 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 Yelabuga, and even earlier he prepared the manuscript “The Life of the Yelabuga merchant Ivan Vasilyevich Shishkin, written by himself in 1867”. For many years, Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin kept notes in his notebook about the most important events that took place in the city and in his family. He called them "Notes of various sights."

Everything in the house was controlled by Ivan Vasilievich's wife, Daria Romanovna, who maintained a strict patriarchal way of life. In this respectable and cultured family, the future artist was brought up.

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

The father wanted to give his son a good education, hired private teachers for him, assigned 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 a motto for himself: "Education, work, love for work" - and steadily followed it.

Already at the school, Ivan Shishkin finally chose his path in painting - the Russian landscape and nature in all its diversity. Shortly before graduation, the young painter painted one of his most remarkable paintings, Hoarfrost, which was highly appreciated 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 fantasy evoked. Shishkin strove for something else. He wanted to paint wildlife that does not need embellishment. “The most important thing for a landscape painter is a diligent study of nature,” he wrote back in Moscow in his student notebook, “as a result of which paintings from nature should be without imagination.” Subsequently, many critics noted that Ivan Shishkin was a real researcher of nature and knew "every wrinkle of the bark, the bend of the branches, the 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 in the exam for two paintings - “View from the environs of St. Petersburg” and “Landscape on the Fox Nose”. The artist was filled with the brightest hopes for the future. His vanity was also flattered by the fact that the leadership of the Academy sent students with him to the summer studies, which he spent in the village of Dubki near Sestroretsk.

Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin was a deeply religious person, so it is not surprising that Valaam attracted him with his special atmosphere of piety. Moreover, the island was famous for its picturesque nature. In 1858, Shishkin first visited Valaam. He brought a lot of sketches and pen drawings from there 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 picture 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 the 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 finished the large painting "Kukko". That 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 went around all the most famous European museums, visited the workshops of artists and did not find anything instructive for himself there. Only the art of Dutch and Belgian artists somehow reconciled Shishkin with abroad. He worked there a lot, went to sketches, although the alien nature did not particularly inspire him.

Nevertheless, in February 1865, Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin presented three of his drawings at a permanent exhibition in Düsseldorf. They were successful. 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 for classes in "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 denied 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 absorbed during his years of study. However, his subsequent works and, in particular, the sketch “Noon. Moscow suburbs. Bratsevo" marked the birth of a new style of the artist. Starting with 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 “Noon”. It will be the first painting by the artist, which was acquired by the famous collector of Russian art P. M. Tretyakov.

At the same time, another important event took place in the life of the artist. He married Evgenia Alexandrovna Vasilyeva, and soon their daughter Lydia was born.

Especially for Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin, a landscape class was created at the Academy of Arts, where he began to teach. For his commitment to Russian nature, he was called "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 undertaking and put his signature under the charter of the Partnership. The following year, their first exhibition took place, at which he presented his painting "Evening". Then he set to work on a new work "Pine Forest" for a competition in the Society for the Encouragement of Arts. She received the first prize and was bought by Tretyakov for his gallery.

In the next few years, Ivan Shishkin's life turned out to be full of adversity. The father died, and then his little son Vladimir. The 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 printed his first album of etchings himself.

However, tragedy 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 after. The heavy losses turned out to be unbearable for Shishkin. He took to drink, could not 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 Wanderers in 1875 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, meets with friends. He was friends with Dmitry Ivanovich Mendeleev, a famous chemist, in whose house the famous "Mendeleev Wednesdays" took place. There were many famous artists, writers, composers. Here Ivan Shishkin met his future wife Olga Antonovna Lagoda. She studied at the Academy of Arts, but then left there and began to study with Shishkin.

In the autumn of 1878, Ivan Shishkin, along with other artists, traveled to Paris, to the World Exhibition. In the same year, his painting "Rye" was presented at a traveling exhibition, which won first place. Everyone recognized that it became the biggest event in the artistic life of Russia.

Like many other Russian artists, Shishkin was in a 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 clerks are developed from students,” he said. He brought up a different view of art in his students: “Work as your heart desires, do not embarrass 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 feeling of love for Russian nature.

However, in the personal life of Ivan Shishkin, disaster struck again. Shortly after the birth of their daughter, the second wife of the artist O. A. Lagoda-Shishkin unexpectedly died. A new loss shocked him, but this time the artist did not drown his mental 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 between the buyers it came to a quarrel.

The same excitement after a while will cause another picture of Ivan Shishkin - "Polesye". It has not been fully 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. She 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 the pearls of Russian art and true masterpieces.

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

At the 17th traveling exhibition, a new painting by Shishkin "Morning in a Pine Forest" was presented, with which a curious story is connected. The author painted it together with another artist - K. Savitsky. He portrayed bears. At first, under it were the signatures of both artists, but Tretyakov, who bought it, was very critical of Savitsky, ordered his name to be covered up. So this picture is still exhibited only with the signature of Shishkin.

The artist has always been 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, this idea was not supported by all artists, in connection with which his relations with other members of the Association of Traveling Exhibitions became more complicated. They considered the reformation of the Academy a waste of time 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 over 200 drawings. And three years later, Shishkin became professor-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 to teach there - Ilya Repin, A. Kuindzhi, V. Makovsky. With their arrival, the spirit of creativity reigned in the Academy, but this idyllic relationship did not last long. The intrigues extinguished for a while resumed, 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 the head of the landscape workshop, but by that time he was already unwell, his heart often failed, 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, replenishing his art collection with another Shishkin painting. The artist decided to paint a new painting - "Red Forest", but in March 1898 he died right in front of the easel.

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

Biography and episodes of life Ivan Shishkin. When born and died Ivan Shishkin, memorable places and dates of important events in his life. artist quotes, Photo and video.

Years of life of Ivan Shishkin:

born January 13, 1832, died March 8, 1898

Epitaph

“In you is the greatness of my people,
His souls are boundless fields,
Thoughtful Russian nature,
My worthy beauty!

I look into your face - and all the past,
I see all the future
You in an unexpected storm and at rest,
Like a mother's heart, I call.

And I know - in this spiky expanse,
In the forest expanses and floods of rivers -
Source of strength and everything in this world
My inspired age will still complete!
From the poem "Russian Nature" by Vsevolod Rozhdestvensky

Biography

The name of the great Russian artist Ivan Shishkin is known to many from a single painting - "Morning in a Pine Forest". Meanwhile, not everyone knows that Shishkin co-wrote this picture. The artist Savitsky became the author of the central characters of the canvas - bears. But, be that as it may, the genius of Shishkin could be recognized even by just one corner of this significant work. After all, Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin was an excellent landscape draftsman; perhaps one of the best in Russia.

Ivan Ivanovich, as a merchant son from an ancient family, could afford to go to an art school without finishing the gymnasium. As he did: by the age of 16, his talent was already impossible to deny. After graduating from college, he entered the Academy of Arts without any problems and already in his first year he received two small silver medals for his landscapes. After 4 years, the artist’s “piggy bank” included, in addition to them, a large silver, small and large gold medals. Together with the latter, the artist was given a pension to continue his education abroad.

Shishkin went to Germany and Switzerland, where he visited the workshops of famous painters, learned to write from the life of animals, draw with a pen; got acquainted with the technique of engraving "royal vodka", to which he then devoted a lot of time. But even before the end of the period that the artist could spend abroad on his pension, Shishkin returned to his native country, which he missed very much. Since then, he has never left Russia, and all his most famous works are distinguished by an infinitely recognizable, native Russian flavor.

Shishkin traveled a lot to nature, and his work is distinguished by an amazing knowledge of it. The trees and grasses painted by him, streams, hills and plains, rural roads and forest thickets always look exactly like living ones. In the 1970s the artist became a member of the aquafortist circle and in this capacity established himself as the best of all. During his lifetime, the artist enjoyed well-deserved fame, he constantly worked, and his works were regularly exhibited.

The artist managed to finish his last great work, “Ship Grove”, in the year of his death. Ivan Shishkin died suddenly, doing what he loved. He died quickly while working on the painting, and when Shishkin's student ran up to the fallen master, he was no longer breathing. The painting, which Shishkin never completed, was called "Forest Kingdom" - it was another landscape of his beloved Russia.

life line

January 13, 1832 Date of birth of Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin.
1852-1856 Studying at the Moscow School of Painting and Sculpture.
1857 Admission to the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts.
1858 First Big Silver Medal of the Academy for the landscape of Valaam.
1861 Trip to Munich.
1863 Moving to Zurich, then Düsseldorf.
1865 Receiving the title of academician for the painting "View in the vicinity of Düsseldorf".
1866 Return to St. Petersburg.
1870 The beginning of work on the engravings "royal vodka".
1873 Obtaining the title of professor.
1889 Creation of the painting "Morning in a pine forest".
1894-1895 Management of the landscape workshop of the Academy of Arts.
March 8, 1898 Date of death of Ivan Shishkin.

Memorable places

1. Memorial house-museum of I. Shishkin in Yelabuga, where the artist was born.
2. Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg, where I. Shishkin studied.
3. Munich, where the artist went to continue his education.
4. Düsseldorf, where I. Shishkin was in 1863
5. House number 10 on the 5th line of the military district in St. Petersburg, where Shishkin lived in 1880-1882.
6. House No. 30 on the 5th line of the VO in St. Petersburg (I. Schmidt's profitable house), where Shishkin lived in 1882-1898.
7. Vyra, where Shishkin bought the estate and where he lived with his second wife.
8. Smolensk Orthodox Cemetery, where I. Shishkin was originally buried.
9. The Tikhvin cemetery of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra, where the ashes of the artist were transferred in 1950.

Episodes of life

While studying at the Academy, Shishkin never missed the opportunity to go out into nature and improve his skills. A real impetus in his work was the visit to Valaam, for the landscapes of which the artist received his first medals.

Initially, the famous "Morning in a Pine Forest" ("Bears") was signed with the names of both authors, but the collector P. Tretyakov erased Savitsky's surname from there.

On the tombstone of I. Shishkin, the wrong date of birth was affixed: 1812. The monument was not altered, and this inscription has been preserved on it until today.

Documentary film "Ivan Shishkin" from the series "The Artist in the Tretyakov Gallery"

Testaments

Russia is a country of landscapes.

"Find one true beauty in a work of art and you will be richer than the one who found ten errors in it."

"The landscape should be not only national, but also local."

condolences

“Like a mighty green forest, he infected everyone with his healthy fun, good appetite and truthful Russian speech ... The audience gasped behind him when he, with his mighty crowbar paws and clumsy, calloused fingers from work, begins to distort and erase his brilliant drawing, and the drawing is for sure By some miracle or some kind of magic, such rough treatment comes out more and more gracefully and brilliantly.
Ilya Repin, artist

“I think that this is the only person in our country who knows the landscape in a scientific way ... All these Klodts, Bogolyubovs and others are boys and puppies in front of him ... Shishkin is a milestone in the development of the Russian landscape, this is a “school” person.
Ivan Kramskoy, artist

“Little by little, the whole school learned that Shishkin draws views that no one has ever painted before him: just a field, a forest, a river, and they come out of him as beautifully as the Swiss views.”
A. Komarova, niece of I. Shishkin

“A man-school”, “a milestone in the development of the Russian landscape” - this is how contemporaries wrote about Shishkin. On this day, I propose to remember our, without a doubt, our national treasure, to look at the pictures again, read about this person and look through old photographs.

Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin was born on January 25 (13th according to the old style) in 1832 in Elabuga (Vyatka province) in a poor merchant family. His father, Ivan Vasilyevich, rented a mill and traded grain, but in addition he was passionate about history and archeology, developed and implemented the water supply system in Yelabuga, wrote manuals and books, and restored the city’s old tower with his own money.

Shishkin's father, Ivan Vasilyevich. Portrait of V.P. Vereshchagin

It was the father who encouraged the development of a creative streak in his son - he praised him for his success in drawing, worked with him on wood carving, and eventually sent him to study at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, where young Ivan ended up in the class of professor of portraiture A.N. Mokritsky, who noticed the talent of a landscape painter in a young man, and helped him develop in the right direction, which Shishkin later recalled with gratitude.

I.I. Shishkin, self-portrait, 1854

While studying at the Shishkin School, the question was why Italian or Swiss landscapes (including those performed by our artists) are so mesmerizing with color and juiciness, is it possible to achieve the same by painting native expanses. And this “nationality” turned out to be the most appropriate “here and now”: at the same time, other artists increasingly began to turn to everything Russian, and writers did not lag behind. Yes, and realism began to be valued and enjoyed success.

View on the island of Valaam, 1858

Shishkin worked on his paintings with such diligence that sometimes it seems that every blade of grass and every leaf is not left without attention, and often with such precision that it could be used as an illustration in a botanical atlas.

Young growth of walnut, 1870s

Burdocks, 1878

Of course, there were and are those who say that emotions are lost behind such thoroughness, they called him a “photographer” and “copyist”, but time puts everything in its place: how many people in our vast expanse do not know the name of Shishkin, even being completely far from art? Are there many who do not know the author of “that same picture with bears” or “that field of rye”? Shishkin's landscapes have long ceased to be just a phenomenon in art, they are inextricably linked with Russian nature, they are like herself.

Before the storm, 1884

Hut, 1861

Autumn forest, 1876

Landscape with a lake, 1886

In the wild north..., 1891

Foggy morning, 1885

Kama near Yelabuga, 1895

Road in the Rye, 1866

Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin is deservedly called an excellent draftsman. He did not part with a pencil, and everywhere he sketched everything that seemed interesting to him, whether it was a broken tree branch, clouds, or a dried leaf.

Landscape with carts, early 1870s

stream in the forest

Summer in the field (Shepherd with a flock), early 1860s

Forest river, 1893

Trees in the field. Bratsevo, 1866

Village, 1874

Shishkin's letter to his parents with a sketch, 1858

By the way, he received his first awards precisely for drawing, being a student of the Imperial Academy of Arts, where he entered after graduating from college. His successes were repeatedly marked with medals, and at the end, together with the Big Gold Medal, Shishkin was awarded a three-year trip abroad. True, he left only after 2 years, he was much more occupied by his native places, and he spent time hugging the road album, making sketches from nature.

View of Yelabuga, 1861

Abroad, he worked in Germany, the Czech Republic and Switzerland.

I.I. Shishkin in Düsseldorf, photograph, 1864/65

Despite all the European beauties, he was drawn home, he wanted to paint Russian nature. Although, it should be noted, on this journey he created the painting “View in the vicinity of Dusseldorf”, for which he was awarded the title of academician.

View near Düsseldorf, 1865

Dresden. Augustus Bridge, 1862

Beech forest in Switzerland, 1863

Swiss landscape, 1866

Upon his return, he travels around Russia, and becomes a member of the Association of Traveling Art Exhibitions along with Repin, Kramskoy, Vasnetsov, Surikov and others. At this time, Shishkin finally formed a recognizable style in which there is no place for romanticization, but there is the beauty of nature itself, and in the late 60s he wrote one of his most famous works - “Noon in the vicinity of Moscow”.

Noon near Moscow, 1869

The artist is madly in love with the forest, regularly going into the wilds from the very early morning, and tirelessly working on sketches and sketches. It should be noted that in his paintings the forest is always majestic, and even solemn.

Forest gatehouse, 1892

Pine forest, 1895

Winter in the Forest (Hoarfrost), 1877

Birch Grove, 1878

Oak Grove, 1887

Meadow at the edge of the forest. Siverskaya, 1887

Deciduous forest edge, 1895

I.I. Shishkin with peasants, photograph, 1890

Often in Shishkin's paintings, nature has truly epic power, and people or animals do not appear too often. It is also not unknown that the bears on the canvas “Morning in a Pine Forest” (1889) were painted not by Shishkin, but by his friend, the artist Konstantin Savitsky, whose signature was removed from the painting by its acquirer Pavel Tretyakov.

Morning in a pine forest, 1889

Shishkin also has many works in which he focuses not on the scale, spaciousness, power of nature, but, on the contrary, on something small, on its individual components - weeds, ferns, pine tops, etc.

Pine tops, 1890s

Flowers by the fence, mid-1880s

Slut-grass. Pargolovo, 1884

Herbs, 1892

In 1873, having painted his next picture - "Wilderness", at the age of 41, Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin received the title of professor at the Academy of Arts.

Wilderness, 1872

Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin was a very fruitful artist, they say about such people "he worked tirelessly."

I.I. Shishkin at work on the painting Mordvin Oaks, photograph, 1891

Ivan Kramskoy. Portrait of I. I. Shishkin. 1873

On one sketch, Shishkin wrote: "Expansion, space, land, rye, God's grace, Russian wealth." And, probably, something similar flashes through the minds of the majority, looking at his famous painting "Rye" (1878).

Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin was married twice. His first wife was Evgenia Alexandrovna Vasilyeva, the sister of another talented Russian landscape painter Fyodor Vasilyev, through whom he met her, immediately falling in love with a girl. Three children were born in this marriage, but both sons died at a young age, and their mother also survived them for a short time. Shishkin was hard to bear the loss, and only after 7 years he married a second time. His second wife was the artist Olga Antonovna Lagoda, who died a month and a half after the birth of their daughter. Until the end of Shishkin's life, Olga's sister Victoria took care of his two daughters and himself.

Shishkin Ivan Ivanovich (1832-1898) - the most famous Russian painter, graphic artist, who depicted nature in all its glory. The variety of works of the creator is amazing: in his paintings one can find steppe and forest-steppe, coniferous landscapes not only in Russia, but also in other countries. It is popular both in our country and all over the world.

Ivan Shishkin: biography

This outstanding man was born into a merchant's family and lived an ordinary life until his school years. As you know, Shishkin could not study at a regular school, so he left it and went to an art school. From there, he entered the university in St. Petersburg, where students were taught not only painting, but architecture and sculpture. Such a base had a very good effect on the development of the abilities of young Shishkin. However, the study tasks were not enough for the artist, and he spent his free time in the open air.

Shishkin's independent practice

Plein air is painting outdoors. Artists created on the street to create light, atmospheric paintings, as opposed to the idealized paintings that were made in the studios (with the help of imagination). Ivan Shishkin also got out to the open air. The biography of this person consists of constant travels to different parts of the world to learn how to draw different landscapes.

Shishkin went out for walks with paints or graphic materials (pencils, charcoal) and wrote to the district of St. Petersburg. Thanks to this habit, the young man quickly improved his skills in depicting shapes and details.

Soon the merits of the young painter were noticed in the educational institution, and the artist Shishkin received many medals for these works. The pictures became more realistic and he made fewer mistakes. Soon the young man became one of the most famous artists in Russia.

"Afternoon near Moscow"

This picture is very light and bright. The first thing that catches your eye is the contrast of sky and field, blue and yellow. The artist (Shishkin) allocated more space for the sky, probably because the sheaves are already very bright. Most of the picture is occupied by gray clouds. They can be found in many shades: emerald, blue and yellow. Only a thin band of bluish horizon separates the field from the sky. In this distance, you can see the hills, and a little closer are the dark blue silhouettes of shrubs and trees. Closest to the viewer is a spacious field.

The wheat is already ripe, but the wild, unsown land is visible on the left. The riot of burnt grass stands out against the background of the yellowish mass of ears and creates an unusual contrast. In the foreground we see the beginning of a wheat field: the artist arranged reddish, burgundy and dark ocher strokes so that the depth of these sheaves was felt. On the road that runs between the grass and the field, the artist Shishkin depicted two figures. By the clothes of these people, one can tell that they are peasants. One of the figures definitely belongs to a woman: we see a scarf tied around her head and a dark skirt.

"Pine trees illuminated by the sun"

Many amazing works were written by Ivan Shishkin. Pine forest he loved to portray the most. However, it is worth paying attention to other canvases: they are not without beauty and sometimes turn out to be much more interesting than more famous paintings.

Pine trees are one of the eternal themes in the work of such an artist as Shishkin Ivan Ivanovich. In this landscape, the play of light and shadow is especially remarkable. The sun shines from behind the artist's back, in time it is noon or late afternoon. In the foreground are two tall pines. Their trunks are so strongly drawn to the sky that they do not fit in the picture. Therefore, tree crowns begin only in the middle of the picture. Although the trunks are not very old, moss has already grown on their bark. From the sun it seems yellowish and in some places gray.

The shadows from the trees are very long and dark, the artist depicted them almost black. Three more pines can be seen in the distance: they are arranged compositionally so as not to knock the viewer off the main thing in the picture. The color scheme of this work - warm consists mainly of light green, brown, ocher and yellowish shades. This palette evokes joy and a sense of peace in the soul. All this is diluted with a few cold shades, which Shishkin skillfully distributed throughout the picture. We see emerald shades on the top of the crowns of pines and on the far left. Thanks to this combination of colors, the composition looks very harmonious and bright at the same time.

"Landscape with a lake" (1886)

This painting is one of the few by Shishkin that depicts water. The artist preferred to paint the thick forest, in contrast to the light vegetation in this work.

The first thing that attracts attention in this work is the lake. The water surface is written in great detail, so that you can see light ripples near the shore and accurate reflections of trees and shrubs.

Thanks to the clear light blue, and in some places purple sky, the water in the lake seems very clean. However, ocher and greenish inclusions give the impression that this lake is real.

The foreground of the painting

In the foreground is the green beach. Small grass is so bright that it seems acidic. Near the very edge of the water, she is lost in the lake, in some places peeking out of its smooth surface. In the contrasting grass, small wild flowers are visible, so white that it seems as if they are glare from the sun on the plants. To the right of the lake, a large dark green bush swaying from the wind interspersed with bright light green shades.

On the other side of the lake, on the left, the viewer can make out the roofs of several houses; there is probably a village near the lake. Behind the rooftops rises an emerald, dark green pine forest.

The artist (Shishkin) chose the right combination of light blue, green (warm and cold), ocher and black.

"Dali"

Something mysterious emanates from Shishkin's painting "Dali", the landscape seems to be lost in the sunset. The sun has already set, and we see only a light streak of light near the horizon. Lonely trees rise to the right in the foreground. There are many plants around them. The greenery is very dense, so almost no light breaks through the bushes. Closer to the center of the canvas is a tall linden, which leaned over from the weight of its branches.

The sky, as in other paintings, occupies most of the composition. The sky is the lightest on the canvas. The gray-blue color of the sky turns into light yellow. Scattered light clouds look very light and dynamic. In this work, Shishkin Ivan Ivanovich appears before us as a romantic and a dreamer.

In the foreground we see a small lake that goes into the distance. It reflects dark stone and burnt ocher and yellow-green grass. In the distance are purple, gray hills, not very high, but noticeable.

Looking at the picture, you are filled with a feeling of sadness and comfort. This effect is created thanks to the warm shades that the artist Shishkin used in his work.

Ivan Shishkin is one of the most famous painters and graphic artists who depicted nature. This man was truly in love with the forests, groves, rivers and lakes of Russia, so he worked them out to the smallest detail in his works. According to Shishkin's paintings, one can not only describe the climate of Russia, but also study the basics of plein air painting. The artist mastered both oil paints and graphic materials to perfection, which is quite rare among creative people. It is difficult to name people who painted nature as well as the artist Shishkin. The paintings of this man are very naturalistic, contrasting and bright.