Ivan Shishkin, Russian Landscape Artist, Plein Air Painter 26/09/2023, 10:34

Ivan Shishkin
Biography of Russian Forest Landscape Artist.
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Ivan Shishkin (1832-98)

A gold-medal winning graduate and later Professor of the Imperial Academy of

Oaks - Evening: A Study (1887)
Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.
LANDSCAPE ART IN RUSSIA
For details of earlier landscapes,
see: Russian Painting, 18th Century.
Arts in St Petersburg, Ivan Shishkin made a unique contribution to Russian art
in the form of landscape painting that celebrated nature in all its pure,
unadorned beauty. His technical virtuosity and exceptional naturalism led to his
being nicknamed "Czar of the forest" by his contemporaries. His most famous
landscape paintings include: Winter (1890, Russian Museum, St. Petersburg),
Rye (1878, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow), Oak Grove (1887, Museum of Russian
Art, Kiev), Morning in a Pine Forest (1889, Tretyakov) and Countess
Mordvinova's Forest at Peterhof (1891, Tretyakov). Well known for his
outstanding draftsmanship as well as his meticulous studies of nature, Shishkin
was also a skilled printmaker. Other Russian artists involved in landscape
during the same period include Fiodor Vasilyev (1850–1873), Alexei Savrasov
(1830–1897), Arkhip Kuindzhi (1842-1910), Vasily Polenov (1844-1927),
Nikolai Duboskoi (1859-1918), and Isaac Levitan (1860-1900).

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Russia's greatest Impressionist.

RUSSIAN ART MUSEUMS Early Life

For more about the top arts
galleries, see:
Hermitage Gallery St Petersburg
Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow
WORLD'S BEST ART
For a list of the best examples of
Fine Art Painting, by the
world's top artists, see below:
Greatest Modern Paintings
Oils, watercolours, mixed
media from 1850-present.
WORLDS TOP ARTISTS
For top creative practitioners, see:
Best Artists of All Time.
For the greatest view painters, see:
Best Landcape Artists.
Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin was born into a middle class family. Although he
showed an exceptional talent for art from an early age, his family only
reluctantly agreed to allow him to become a painter. On graduating from high
school, he then spent four years studying at the Moscow School of Painting,
Sculpture and Architecture, after which he enrolled at the Imperial Academy of
Arts for another four years, from 1856 to 1860. During his time at the
Academy he won a series of awards and, on graduation, he received a Gold
Medal (for his work View of Valaam Island, Kukko. 1860, Russian Museum, St
Petersburg) plus a scholarship allowing him to study abroad for three years.
Accordingly in 1862 he set off for Europe, where he studied drawing, painting,
lithography and etching, mostly in Germany and Switzerland. In 1865, he
painted View near Dusseldorf (1865, Russian Museum, St. Petersburg) which
gained him full membership of the Imperial Academy of Arts, and which was
later displayed at the World Fair in Paris (1867).

Career

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On his return to Russia, he became a founder member of the progressive artist

group known as The Association of Travelling Art Exhibitions (aka The
Wanderers). He also joined the Society of Russian Watercolourists, and
participated in exhibitions at the Academy of Arts, the All Russian Exhibition in
Moscow (1882) and Nizhny Novgorod (1896), as well as World Fairs in Paris
(1867 and 1878), and Vienna (1873). In 1873 he became Professor of Painting
at the Imperial Academy - a position he retained until 1898.

Shishkin went on to produce hundreds of landscape paintings - many of which

were bought by the Russian art collector Pavel Tretyakov - several thousand
studies and drawings, as well as a large number of engravings. Sadly, the
success he obtained in his career as an artist was not repeated in his personal
life. He married twice but both times his wife died, as did his children. Despite
this, he continued painting until the day he died. His last completed work was
Mast-Tree Grove (1898, Russian Museum). He passed away in St Petersburg at
the age of 66.

Although he painted a relatively narrow range of landscape subjects, Shishkin

has maintained his reputation as one of the greatest Russian landscape
painters of the 19th century. Unconcerned with narrative, romanticism or
interpretation, Shishkin set out simply to reproduce the beauty of nature. His
painstaking attention to detail, reinforced by countless analytical studies of
natural scenes and objects, (see: Oaks - Evening, above) lent him great
authority among his contemporaries in Russian painting of the 19th-century.

Selected Works

Shishkin's scenic paintings hang in all the best art museums across Russia and
the Ukraine. In addition to those already cited, here is a short selection of his
best known works.

- Beech Forest in Switzerland (1863, Russian Museum, St. Petersburg

- Teutoburg Forest (1865, RM, St P)
- Promenading in the Forest (1869, RM, St P)
- Noon in the Neighbourhood of Moscow (1869, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow)
- Forest Landscape with Herons (1870, RM, St P)
- Willows Lit Up by the Sun (1870s, RM, St P)
- Gathering Mushrooms (1870, RM, St P)
- Pine Forest in Viatka Province (1872, TG)
- Coniferous Forest (1873, Belorussian Museum of Arts, Minsk)
- Twilight. After Sunset (1874, Museum of Russian Art, Kiev)
- Forest Stream (1874, Museum of Russian Art, Kiev)
- Fallen Tree (1875, Museum of Russian Art, Kiev)
- Path in a Forest (1880, RM, St P)
- Stream by a Forest Slope (1880, Museum of Russian Art, Kiev)
- Thickets (1881, TG)
- Gathering Storm (1884, RM, St P)
- Misty Morning (1885, Gorky Art Museum)
- The Holy Spring Near Yelabuga (1886, Museum of Russian Art, Kiev)
- Wind-Fallen Trees (1888, Museum of Russian Art, Kiev)
- Autumn (1892, RM, St P)
- The Kama Near Yelabuga (1895, Gorky Art Museum)
- Coniferous Forest, Sunny Day (1895, RM, St P)

• For more biographies, see: Famous Painters.

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