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Ivan
Shishkin
(1832-1898)
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The
works of this outstanding artist enjoy vast popularity in Russia;
the best of them have become the classics of Russian landscape
painting. During 40 years of his artistic activity Ivan Shishkin
produced hundreds of paintings, thousands of studies and drawings
and a large number of engravings. For contemporaries, Shishkin’s
personality embodied Russian nature itself; they called him
“forest tzar”, “old pine tree”, and “lonely oak”. |
Ivan Ivanovich
Shishkin was born into the family of a merchant. His father, a
self-made and broad-minded man, after long hesitations, supported
his son's desire to become an artist. In 1852-1856, Shishkin studied
in the Moscow School of Painting and Sculpture, in 1856-1860, he
continued his studies in St. Petersburg, in the Academy of Arts. He
made rapid progress and got all the awards the Academy offered.
Having received a Major Gold Medal for two pictures with the same
name
View
of Valaam Island. Kukko. (1860) and an Academy grant for studies
abroad, Shishkin spent 3 years (1862-1865) in Germany, Switzerland,
Czech, France, Belgium and Holland. Gradually he got disappointed in
his foreign teachers and European authorities in landscape painting.
Now he felt free and independent and longed to return home, to
Russia.
During his stay abroad Shishkin engaged in lithography and etching.
His numerous pen drawings caught the eye of the Düsseldorf public
and critics by their virtuoso hatching and filigree treatment of
detail. In 1865, Shishkin painted his
View
near Düsseldorf for which he was awarded the title of
Academician and which was shown at the 1867 World Fair in Paris.
In 1865, he returned to Russia and settled in St. Petersburg, where
he joined the Itinerants’ Society of Traveling Exhibitions (Peredvizhniki).
One of his first masterpieces
Noon
in the Neighbourhood of Moscow (1869) critics called “song of
joy”. He always preferred to draw daytime scenes, full of sunlight
and life.
Pine
Forest in Viatka Province (1872),
Rye
(1878),
Path
in a Forest (1880),
Oaks
(1887),
Coniferous
Forest. Sunny Day. (1895). His scrupulous reproduction of nature
stood in sharp contrast to the academic canons of landscape
painting. For his loving approach to detail some critics called his
works colored pictures, which lack of life. But despite such
attention to details Shishkin’s paintings do not fall apart, but
give full and finished impression.
Shishkin had a troubled private life, twice he fell in love and
married and twice his wives died. His sons also died. But never
Shishkin allowed his sorrows appear on his canvases. His last work
is
Mast-Tree
Grove (1898). He died in his studio at the easel with newly
begun canvas.
Among the Russian landscape painters Shishkin was the staunchest and
most consistent exponent of the materialistic aesthetics – to
depict nature in all its pure, unadorned beauty. His role in Russian
art did not lose its significance even in the years, which saw the
appearance of splendid landscapes by
Isaac
Levitan,
Valentin
Serov and
Constantin
Korovin. Despite the fact that he espoused different aesthetic
principles and advocated a different artistic system, Shishkin
enjoyed an indisputable authority among young Russian painters of
the late 19th century. The new generation did not fail to
acknowledge him as a thoughtful and masterful portrayer of Russian
nature.Bibliography:
Shishkin by I. Shuvalova. Russian Painters of the XIX
century. Moscow. 1990. |
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Morning
in the Pine tree Forest 1889 |
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Many thanks to
www.abcgallery.com
www.russianartgallery.org
www.elibron.com |
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