Brief biography of Shishkin and his paintings. Shishkin's biography

15.04.2019

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Artist Shishkin Ivan Ivanovich was born in 1832 on January 25 in the city. The birthplace of the artist Shishkin is the city of Elabuga. He studied and graduated from the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. He traveled a lot for artistic purposes in Russia. In 1892 he was invited to lead a landscape workshop, but did not work in this position for long, as he died suddenly in 1898, on March 20 at an easel.

Family: Shishkin had two wives. The first marriage had three children - sons Vladimir and Konstantin, daughter Lydia. In the second marriage - daughter Ksenia.

Creativity of the artist Shishkin

Painting connoisseurs asserted and still maintain that among all Russian painters "... he undoubtedly belongs to the place of the most powerful draftsman." Many paintings by I.I. Shishkin is and is kept in public collections - most of them in Tretyakov Gallery and the Russian Museum. The landscape painter Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin performed over a hundred works. Their plot is the life of Russian forests. In addition, in 1886, he himself published an album of prints, in which he placed 25 works. In 1984 -85 A. Beggrov created photographs from charcoal drawings made for him by Shishkin.

About Shishkin for children

What can you tell children about Shishkin?

This is a Russian artist of the 19th century, he traveled a lot around Russia and painted beautiful landscapes. All trees, grass, bushes, leaves, roots take on true forms. The area under the trees: stones, sand, clay, brushwood, dead wood, etc. obtained in his drawings in perfect reality. It is worth noting that I.I.Shishkin for painting his landscapes chose a time of day when there is no shadow from objects.
Memory of I.I. People still honor Shishkin: a monument to him has been erected in the city of Elabuga, and since 1962 a memorial house, a museum of I.I. Shishkin. In many cities of Russia there are streets named after him, stamps have been issued several times - to anniversaries artist, as well as stamps reproducing his paintings "Rye", "Morning in a Pine Forest", "Ship Grove", "In the Wild North" and others. These stamps are highly valued and the philatelists value them very much.

About the work of I.I.Shishkin for children

I would like to describe the small experience of the work of the teacher N.Ye., who in 1982, in the year of the 150th anniversary of the birthday of I.I. Shishkina, organized with her children senior group kindergarten lesson-excursion to the children's library, where the exhibition “Life and work of the artist Shishkin. The exhibition was held under the motto "Keeping Memory in the Heart". The children were told their biography and shown the works of the artist Shishkin. The attention of the children was drawn to the fact that the Russian artist, master of landscape, the whole world knows his paintings, and in our homeland all schoolchildren, since illustrations of many paintings are in school textbooks. Passing from picture to picture, the children saw age-old pines, the vastness and expanse of fields, the "inhabitants" of the forest.

Later, the teacher conducted a series of classes on acquaintance with the landscapes of the Russian artist Shishkin. Ivan Shishkin did not write specifically for children, but in his paintings, children learned to describe what they saw, paying attention to the selection of colors, the season, and so on. Later, the children were asked to reproduce the landscapes of their native land themselves.

In all classes, the solution of the following tasks was envisaged:

To develop children's interest in the fine arts, to know the names of artists, to be able to distinguish their work.
Learn to see the beauty of nature.
To foster love for native nature, respect for all life on Earth; desire to visit museums, libraries.

Shishkin in the upbringing of preschool children

The result of the work of N.E. with children on this topic began interesting stories based on the paintings of I.I.Shishkin. For example, Katya (6 years old) made descriptive story based on the painting "Rye". “Endless field of rye. In the center are mighty pines. They are like a watchman. The picture depicts a hot day, because the sky is clear, blue, and the spikelets are golden, like the sun. They lean low to the ground, soon it will be necessary to harvest. "

Dima (6 years old) "Morning in a pine forest". “The artist painted the wilderness, the forest is dark and scary. And there are also cubs, they are playing, they probably ate and slept well. "

To the teacher's question: “Why is the picture called“ Morning in a Pine Forest ”(emphasis was placed on the word“ morning ”)? All the children noticed that the sun's rays had not yet "reached" the cubs.

Unforgettable were the children's drawing works using Shishkin's paintings "Rye", "Morning in a Pine Forest", "In the Wild North". Masha P., who attended N.I.'s group, after graduating from school, entered the school of painting and drawing in the city of Irkutsk and graduated from it with success. And her first work was the painting "Morning in a Pine Forest", which still hangs on the wall of her grandmother in the most conspicuous place. The girl has always loved to draw, and her first acquaintance with the artist Shishkin may have influenced her choice.

I cited all these examples in order to draw the attention of parents raising children preschool age, to foster a love of art. Creativity and everything beautiful in general.

I bring to your attention a list of paintings by the artist I.I.Shishkin, accessible to understanding and perception of preschoolers: "Rye", "Morning in a pine forest", "In the wild north", "Winter", "Forest", "Fly agaric", " Birch Grove" etc. And, to be honest, you can take any landscape of this master and talk with children. Appropriate. When considering paintings and conversations about their writing, use the reading of poems by Fet, Pushkin, Yesenin and other poets, whose poems have something in common with the theme of Shishkin's landscape.

Thus, we can safely say that in raising children, Shishkin helps us to form their perception of artistic creativity, to foster interest in painting, to understand the beauty and grandeur of Russian nature, artistic taste.

About creativity

In the treasury of Russian art, Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin belongs to one of the most honorable places. His name is associated with the history of the Russian landscape of the second half 19th century... The works of the outstanding master, the best of which have become classics of national painting, gained immense popularity.

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 possessed a tremendous talent for a nugget. No one before Shishkin with such a stunning openness and with such a disarming intimacy told the viewer about his love for his native land, for the discreet charm of northern nature.

Master's biography

Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin was born on January 13 (25), 1832 in Elabuga (Vyatka province) into a poor merchant family. Without completing his studies at the Kazan gymnasium, Shishkin left her and continued his education at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture (1852-56), and then at the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts (1856-65). Died Shishkin I.I. suddenly, 8 (20) March 1898 in St. Petersburg, working on new picture.

Ivan Shishkin paintings

It seemed that it could mid XIX century to be more familiar and ordinary for anyone
an inhabitant of central Russia, what is the view of a pine forest or a field of ripening rye? Ivan Shishkin had to appear in order to create creations that are still unsurpassed works of landscape art, in which, with amazing clarity, as if for the first time you see new protected places.

Lush coniferous thickets, fat fields, the boundless expanse of the Fatherland appear before us. No one before Shishkin with such a stunning openness and with such a disarming intimacy told the viewer about his love for his native land, for the discreet charm of northern nature.

Ivan Shishkin - "King of the Forest"

Shishkin was called "the king of the forest", this reveals his devotion to the theme "Russian forest". Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin was truly the "king of valera": the artist was completely subject to the highest omen easel painting- valere, the ability to paint a picture using the finest nuances of light, shadow, color. Such a technique requires the master to have excellent mastery of drawing, color painting and a jeweler's feeling of the light-air environment, the general tone of the picture, determined by a state that is unique in time.

Such canvases seem to be sung in one breath, where there are no coarse contours, false effects. There is only imitation of one great artist - nature. In each of the canvases, the artist shows himself to be a wonderful connoisseur of nature, every smallest part of it, be it a tree trunk or just sand covered with dead wood. For all their realism, Shishkin's paintings are very harmonious and imbued with a poetic feeling of love for the homeland.

The meaning of the artist's work

Ivan Shishkin is an artist of tremendous creative passion and dedication. He amazed his contemporaries with his efficiency. Heroic growth, strong, healthy, always working - this is how he was remembered by his friends. He died sitting at his easel, working on a new painting. It was March 20, 1898.

The artist left a huge legacy: more than 500 paintings, about 2000 drawings and graphic works.

The entire creative path of Shishkin appears before us as a great feat of the Russian man, who in his works glorified his homeland, dearly and dearly beloved by him. This is the strength of his creativity. This is the guarantee that his paintings will live forever.

"Shishkin is a folk artist," wrote V.V. Stasov back in 1892. And this is the right to honorary title assigned our people to Shishkin.

You can download the full version of the finished abstract at the link below

Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin was born on January 13 (25), 1832 in Elabuga - a small provincial town, located on the banks of the Kama. Here the future painter spent his childhood and youth.

The figure of the father was very significant for Ivan Shishkin. The father himself was a merchant, not at all rich, he sold grain from a rented mill. In addition, he was fond of archeology, history. He wrote the book "History of the city of Elabuga", developed and implemented a local water supply system. On own funds Ivan Vasilyevich Shishkin restored an old tower located in the suburbs. It is also known about his participation in the excavations of the famous Ananievsky burial ground. He taught all this knowledge to his son, developed his interest in nature. Ivan with early childhood did not part with coal and chalk, painstakingly decorating walls and doors with intricate figures, carved, like his father, in wood.

For several years Shishkin studied at the Kazan gymnasium, but dropped out, returned home, and began again to draw and read. He was very much attracted by the forest, Shishkin could walk for a long time in the forest, in its vicinity, studying its features. So it took about 4 years, Shishkin, having received permission from his father, leaves for Moscow.

Since 1852, Shishkin became a student of the Moscow School of Painting and Sculpture. Immediately he gets to the exhibition of Caucasian mountain views of LF Lagorio and IK Aivazovsky's marinas, among which was the famous "Ninth Wave". This exhibition only strengthened Shishkin's interest in landscape.

At that time in teaching, the principles of Venetsianov's pedagogical system were widely used with the installation of a careful study of nature. Shishkin, being quiet, shy, ended up in the professor's class portrait painting A.N. Mokritsky, admirer of K. Bryullov. Having identified the great abilities of Shishkin, Mokritsky managed to direct him along the right path, encouraging in him an interest in nature, a passion for the landscape.

Shishkin draws a lot from life in Moscow and the Moscow region, copies Western European masters.

After graduating from college in 1856, Shishkin entered the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts. Here he also entered the circle of democratic-minded youth. Art was recognized not only as a means of understanding the world, but also as a serious factor in its reorganization. Under the influence of these ideas, Shishkin's worldview was formed. Subsequently, the artist was able to clearly express them in his work.

Shishkin's main teacher has always been nature. In sketches ("Stones in the Forest. Valaam"), he lovingly and surprisingly skillfully conveys ancient boulders covered with moss and fern leaves for a novice artist.

Shishkin was a born draftsman who gravitated towards line, towards open strokes. Drawing from the very beginning became for him the most important means of studying nature. Success in drawing brought Shishkin in 1857 one of the first academic awards - the Silver Medal. His works were executed with such professional skill that academic council decided to make them a model for students.

Shishkin graduated from the Academy in 1860 with the highest award - the Big Gold Medal and the right to travel abroad for three years. But the artist was in no hurry with the trip, but went to his native Elabuga, and only in April 1862 he left abroad. Even there, Ivan Shishkin did not forget about his native country. Letters from friends who reported on the events strengthened the desire to return, moreover, and the works performed in Germany and Switzerland did not satisfy the author. His landscapes, marked by external romantic features - figures of villagers, herds in pastures - bore clear traces of the academic school. It was only possible to create a national landscape in Russia, where Shishkin returned in 1865. He was already accompanied by fame. Pen drawings, masterfully executed with the smallest, beaded strokes, with filigree finishing of details, amazed the audience. Two such drawings were acquired by the Dusseldorf Museum, and the painting "View in the vicinity of Dusseldorf" brought the artist the title of academician.

With the arrival at home, Shishkina seemed to be infused with new forces. He becomes close to the members of the Artel, around which the representatives of the progressive creative intelligentsia, participates in meetings on the role of art, on the rights of the artist. Ivan Shishkin was always surrounded by the attention of his comrades. IE Repin spoke about him like this: " The loudest voice of I.I.Shishkin was heard: like a green mighty forest, he amazed everyone with his health, good appetite and truthful Russian speech ... with his fingers he begins to mangle and rub his brilliant drawing, and the drawing, as if by a miracle or magic, from such a rude treatment by the author comes out more and more graceful and brilliant."

Shishkin's works, created at the end of the 60s, mark a new stage in the master's work.

Achieving the utmost resemblance to nature, the artist at first carefully writes out every detail, and this interferes with the integrity of the image. An example of such works is the painting "Logging". In the 60s, Shishkin finally overcomes the abstraction of the landscape characteristic of the academic school. Best Job these years - "Noon. In the vicinity of Moscow". The merit of this picture, light in color, filled with a joyful and pacified mood, is not only in the skill of conveying space, but above all in the fact that the landscape created by Shishkin is truly Russian in character.

In 1870, Shishkin joined the founders of the largest association of masters of the realistic direction - the Association of Traveling Art Exhibitions. Until the end of his life, Shishkin remained one of the most active and loyal members of the Association.

At the second traveling exhibition, Shishkin presented the painting "Pine Forest" (1872), which was a new step in creative development master. The artist managed to create the image of a mighty, stately Russian forest.

The work of Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin was a step on the path of cognition and reflection of the world around him, as Kramskoy aptly put it, was a "living school" for working with nature.

In the 70s, most of Shishkin's works were devoted to the coniferous forest: "Wilderness", "Black Forest", "Spruce Forest". Shishkin is attracted by vast forests. The best landscapes of that time are filled with stately solemnity.

In the 70s. the artist strives for greater generalization of forms, the integrity of color solutions. At the same time, he is quite close to Kramskoy. Friendship with this man, the ideological leader of the partnership, theorist and subtle critic of art, played a special role in Shishkin's creative development. There was no other person who so keenly noticed his mistakes and helped to overcome them. Often they lived together in the country, where they worked fruitfully.

Ivan Shishkin attached great importance to sketches. For him, the creation of an etude was genuine creative process based on long-term observation and reflection. Big role he devoted himself to drawing and almost never parted with the crandash. Admiring the keen observation and confidence with which Shishkin wrote sketches, Kramskoy said: "... When he is in front of nature, he is definitely in his element: here he is bold and dexterous, he does not think."

The main form of expression of the ideas that worried Shishkin always remained the picture, with the greatest completeness he revealed in it the ideas that inspired him. An example of this is the work "Rye".

At this time, Shishkin is at the zenith of fame, but new remarkable achievements awaited him ahead. 80-90s - a period of increased flowering of the landscape painter's talent. The canvases "Wilds", "Pine Forest", "Burelom" are close in character to the works of the previous decade, but they are interpreted with a greater scenic freedom.

In the 80s. Shishkin enthusiastically continues to work on landscapes that glorified open spaces native land... "Among the flat valley" - one of his best paintings - is built on the opposition of a vast plain and a lonely mighty oak, as if hovering over it.

In the last decade of his life, the artist perceives nature more penetratingly, subtly, the role of light in his paintings increases. In the 90s. organized two exhibitions of the artist's works. The first, in 1891, was of a retrospective nature: over five hundred studies revealed the artist's creative laboratory and his quest. Another exhibition in 1893 showed works made during last summer... They testified to the diversity of designs, the exceptional vigilance of the eye and the high skill of the sixty-year-old landscape painter.

In 1895 Shishkin published his fourth album of etchings. It was a foul event in artistic life country. The album included 60 sheets - all the best works.

The painting "Ship Grove" (1898) became a brilliant result of the artist's almost half-century journey in Russian art. It can be considered classic in terms of completeness, completeness of the artistic image, monumentality of sound. The work is based on sketches made in Elabuga. The role of Ivan Shishkin in Russian art remained just as significant in those years when many great works I. Levitan, V. Serov, K. Korovin.

Death came to the artist unexpectedly. Ivan Ivanovich died at the easel on March 8 (20), 1898, while working on the painting "Forest Kingdom". He left behind a huge artistic legacy.

The artist came from a fairly ancient and wealthy merchant family of the Shishkins. Was born in Elabuga in 1832 on January 13 (25). His father was a well-known wealthy merchant in the city. He tried to give his son a good education.

Education

From the age of 12, Shishkin studied at the First Kazan Gymnasium, and at the age of 20 he entered the Moscow School of Painting. After graduation (in 1857) he continued his studies at the Imperial Academy of Arts as a student of Professor S. M. Vorobyov. Already at this time, Shishkin liked to paint landscapes. He traveled extensively around the area Northern capital, visited Valaam. The beauty of the harsh northern nature will inspire him throughout his life.

In 1861, at the expense of the Academy, he went on a trip abroad and studied for some time in Munich, Zurich, Geneva, Dusseldorf. There he got acquainted with the works of Benno, F. Adamov, F. Dide, A. Kalam. The trip lasted until 1866. By this time, in his homeland, Shishkin had already received the title of academician for his work.

Homecoming and career peak

Returning to his homeland, Shishkin continued to improve his landscape technique. He traveled a lot across Russia, exhibited at the Academy, took part in the work of the Association of Traveling Exhibitions, drawing a lot with a pen (the artist mastered this technique while abroad). He also continued to work with the engraving "royal vodka", joining the circle of St. Petersburg aquafortists in 1870. His reputation was impeccable. He was considered the best landscape painter and an engraver of his time. In 1873 he became a professor at the Academy of Arts (he received the title for the painting "Wilderness").

A family

In the biography of Shishkin it is said that the artist was married twice, with the first marriage to the artist's sister F.A.Vasiliev, and the second marriage to his student, O. A. Lagoda. From two marriages, he had 4 children, of which only two daughters survived to adulthood: Lydia and Ksenia.

The artist died in 1898 (suddenly). At first he was buried at the Smolensk cemetery, but then the ashes and the gravestone were transferred to the cemetery of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra.

Other biography options

The artist's year of birth is not known exactly. The biographers' data vary (from 1831 to 1835). But in official biographies it is customary to indicate the year 1832.
The artist drew superbly with pencil and pen. His pen work was very popular with the European public. Many of them are kept in the Art Gallery in Düsseldorf.
Shishkin was an excellent naturalist. That is why his works are so realistic, spruce is like spruce, and pine is like pine. He knew perfectly Russian nature in general and Russian forest in particular.
The most famous work artist "Morning in a pine forest" was created in collaboration with K. Savitsky. A little earlier this picture was written by another, "Fog in a pine forest", which the authors liked so much that they decided to rewrite it, including a certain genre scene... The craftsmen were inspired by a trip through the virgin Vologda forests.
The most large collection Shishkin's works are kept in the Tretyakov Gallery, slightly less in the Russian Museum. A large number of drawings and prints made by the artist are in private collections. Interestingly, a collection of photographs of Shishkin's prints was released

In the treasury of Russian art, Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin belongs to one of the most honorable places. His name is associated with the history of the national landscape of the second half of the XIX centuries. The works of the outstanding master, the best of which have become classics of national painting, gained immense popularity.

Shishkin Ivan Ivanovich was born on January 13 (25), 1832 in Elabuga - a small town located on the high bank of the Kama. An impressionable, inquisitive, gifted boy found an irreplaceable friend in his father. A poor merchant, I. V. Shishkin was a man of versatile knowledge. He instilled an interest in antiquity, nature, reading books in his son, encouraging in the boy a love of 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 Father's house, where he languished for the next four years, internally protesting against the limited interests of the overwhelming majority of the inhabitants around him and not yet finding the opportunity to determine the further creative path.

Shishkin began to systematically study at the Moscow School of Painting and Sculpture only at the age of twenty, with difficulty overcoming the patriarchal foundations of a family that 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 Apollo Mokritsky.

Mokritsky adhered to strict rules of drawing and form construction. But the same academic method involved strict adherence to the rules, not a quest for something new. In one of his letters, Mokritsky instructed Shishkin, already a student of the Academy of Arts, about the opposite: “Work hard and think more about the subject than about the“ method. ”This lesson has become firmly embedded in Shishkin's work.

At the school, Shishkin's attraction to the landscape was immediately determined. "The landscape painter is a true artist, he feels deeper, cleaner," he wrote a little later in his diary. "Nature is always new ... and is 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 captivates Shishkin. Incessantly studying the nature in which everything seemed interesting to him, be it an old stump, a driftwood, a dry tree. The artist constantly painted in a 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 on her back. Drawing from the very beginning became for him the most important means of studying nature.

Among Shishkin's early graphic works, 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 painting. However, all his sketches are extremely simple - a pine tree by the water, a bush on a swampy plain, a river bank. And in this, the originality of the artist is already manifested. His niece AT Komarova later said: “Little by little, the whole school learned that Shishkin was drawing such views that no one else had drawn before him: just a field, a forest, a river, and he made them look as beautiful as Swiss views".

Acquired by the State Russian Museum, it is still quite timid in execution, clearly a student sketch "Pine on a Rock", dated April 1855, is the only landscape work in oil painting 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 the paint.

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

Thanks to the love and care of its leader - A.N. Mokritsky, the relationship of the first art school continued to persist for a long time in the thoughts and soul of the novice artist. Accepted without much trouble at the Academy of Arts in the year of graduation from the art school, Shishkin at the same time appeals more than once for advice to Mokritsky and willingly introduces him to the circle of his studies, successes and difficulties.

At the Academy of Arts, Shishkin quickly distinguished himself among the students for his preparedness and brilliant abilities. Shishkin was drawn to thirst artistic research nature. He focused on the fragments of nature, in connection with which he carefully examined, probed, studied each stem, tree trunk, quivering foliage on branches, raised grasses and soft mosses. Thus, a whole world of previously unknown objects, poetic inspirations and raptures was discovered. The artist discovered a vast world of unremarkable components of nature, previously not included in the circulation of art. Already a little over three months after admission, he attracted the attention of professors with his full-scale 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 "hand-drawn picture", it also has a sense of the 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 Socrat Vorobyov added almost nothing to the knowledge gained at the School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. With the passage of time, academicism, transforming the once living and progressive art into a sclerotic canon, was also inherent in the Russian academy, whose life was under the heavy pressure of bureaucratic bureaucratization of art education.

During his studies at the Academy of Arts, Shishkin showed symptoms of imitation less than others, but some influences also affected him. This applies primarily to the work of the Swiss landscape painter A. Kalam, who was extremely popular in his time, a shallow artist who studied Alpine nature with love and knew how to externally poeticize it. Copies from Kalam's works were mandatory 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 young artist A. Mokritsky writes to Shishkin in St. Petersburg on March 26, 1860, writes: "I remember. You told me that in the way and manner of drawing your drawings resemble Kalam - I do not see; there is something of your own in your manner ... This shows that there is no need to imitate the manner of one or another 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. , this manner is in nature, and did not internalize it unconsciously. "

The works of the young Shishkin, created during the years of study at the Academy, are marked by romantic features, but this was rather a tribute to the prevailing tradition. His sober, calm, thoughtful attitude to nature was becoming more and more clearly visible. He approached her not only as an artist fascinated by beauty, but also as a researcher studying her forms.

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

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

In nature itself, Shishkin seeks such motives that would allow 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 scheme are here side by side with a careful study of details, with that close scrutiny of nature, which will become a distinctive feature of everything. further creativity 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, dryish in painting, but testifying to a good mastery of drawing, formed the basis of Shishkin's competitive painting "View on the Island of Valaam. The Cucco Region", shown at the 1860 academic exhibition and awarded the Great Gold Medal. She was previously in the United States, and in 1986 she was at an auction in London. Her fate is currently unknown.

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

His way to style features of his work was far from simple, because in the formation of him as a landscape painter, a strong connection with the Academy and its aesthetic principles still affected. Outwardly, it continued to persist even after Shishkin's return from abroad, where he left in 1862 as a pensioner of the Academy. Manifesting 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 appears 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 for the artist to choose his own further path, a choice that was all the more responsible for Shishkin and his original talent, not only for himself, but also for his closest comrades, who felt in him a landscape painter walking along a new road. Rapprochement with the 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 after returning from abroad could be observed in the creative life of other landscape painters. Awareness of the importance of new tasks outstripped the possibilities of their solution. The era of the 60s itself 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 breakdown of the conventional and impoverished methods of the academic system of painting, devoid of a lively attitude to nature and a sense of artistic truth.

The first signs of internal dissatisfaction with his position, and possibly with the existing painting method, appeared in Shishkin very clearly already in the next year, upon his return from abroad. He spent the summer of 1866 in Moscow and worked in Bratsevo together with L. L. Kamenev, his friend from the Moscow School of Painting and Sculpture. Collaboration with the landscape painter of the Moscow school, sincerely keen on the motives of the flat Russian landscape, does not pass without leaving a trace. In addition to the light Shishkin drawings that have come down to us with the signature "Bratsevo", free from the constraints of his academic manner, the main thing, of course, were the pictorial sketches he performed, one of which captured the motive of the ripening rye field and the road, which later served, 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 distant plans, a road coming from the depths, and a high sky stretched over the ground with light cumulus clouds. The presence of the picture in no way diminishes the independent artistic value of the sketch performed on nature with a particularly successful painting of the sky with silvery clouds at the edges, illuminated from the depths by the sun.

Representing a typical Central Russian plain landscape, the picture at the same time reveals in its content and figuratively expressed through the landscape theme folk life... Completing the sixties and the path of perestroika, it at the same time becomes an application for the artist's future work, however, for the most part devoted to the motives of the forest landscape, but in the essence of 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 seventeen-year-old Fyodor Vasiliev, whom he took care of and taught painting.

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

To define the "face" of the landscape, Shishkin preferred a 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 endless uniqueness of the life of a tree. In the "felling of the forest" it can be seen from the elastic roundness of the sawn spruce, which seems to be a slender antique column, crushed by barbarians. The slender pines on the left side of the picture are tactfully painted with the light of a dying day. Beloved by the artist subject plan with ferns, lush grass, damp earth torn by rhizomes, an animal in the foreground and a fly agaric contrasting with a solemn and echoing forest - all this inspires a feeling of ecstasy 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, cut diagonally by a stream, felled spruce trees and bent aspen and birch trees growing "wildly".

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 submitted two landscapes to the Academy of Arts, hoping to receive the title of professor. Instead, the artist was introduced 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, preparing for an academic exhibition. The painting "Noon. In the outskirts of Moscow" was knocked out of the general order. In September-October 1869, it was exhibited at an academic exhibition and, apparently, was not acquired. Therefore, Pavel Tretyakov, in a letter to the artist, asked him to leave the painting for him. Shishkin gratefully agreed to give it to the collection for 300 rubles - the amount proposed by Tretyakov.

In the painting "Noon. In the Environs of Moscow" a theme sounded that covered not only Shishkin's work, but also a significant part of Russian landscape painting. The theme of thanksgiving, the perception of life as a good, 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 artist-democrat wanted to express in the images of Russian nature the best national ideals and aspirations, for the realization of which representatives of all 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 performed the painting "Mast Forest in the Vyatka Province". The name 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 the dispatch of the paintings, calls Shishkin's painting "the most remarkable work of the Russian school." In a letter to Vasiliev about the same picture, Kramskoy speaks even more enthusiastically. "He (that is, Shishkin)," writes Kramskoy, "wrote a good thing to such an extent that, still remaining himself, he has not yet done anything equal to the present. This is an extremely characteristic work of our landscape painting."

Having become 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 number of years (especially in the 70s) passed in front of Kramskoy. Usually, from year to year, both artists settled together over the years, somewhere among the nature of central Russia. To many, apparently indebted to the participation of Kramskoy, Shishkin openly called him the artist who had a beneficial influence on him. Kramskoy, seeing the steady creative growth of the landscape painter since the beginning of the 70s, especially rejoiced at his successes 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 Vasiliev from near Luga (where Kramskoy and Shishkin lived together), Kramskoy often wrote about practicing sketches. “Instead of reasoning, I’ll tell you what we’re doing here,” he writes to Vasiliev on August 20. “Firstly, Shishkin is getting younger, that is, growing. Seriously ... , and as I wrote to you, it is improving in color. "

At the same time, Kramskoy, with his characteristic depth and breadth in his views on art, immediately felt a healthy basis and strengths creativity Shishkin and its enormous potential. Already in 1872, in a letter to Vasiliev Kramskoy, noting with severe impartiality a certain limitation inherent in Shishkin's work in those years, he defined the place and significance of this artist for Russian art: "... he is still immeasurably higher than all taken together, to until now ... Shishkin is a milestone in the development of the Russian landscape, he is a man - a school, but a living school. "

In April 1874, Shishkin's first wife, Evgenia Alexandrovna (sister of Fyodor Alexandrovich Vasilyev), died, and after her little son... Under the weight of personal experiences, Shishkin sank for a while, moved away from Kramskoy and quit working. He settled in the village, again became friends with classmates at the Moscow School of Painting and Sculpture and the Academy of Arts, who often drank with him. Shishkin's mighty nature conquered difficult emotional experiences, and already in 1875, at the 4th Traveling Exhibition, Shishkin was able to give a number of paintings, of which one ("Spring in a Pine Forest") again provoked enthusiastic praise from Kramskoy.

In the seventies, Shishkin became more and more interested in etching. The technique of gravure printing, which allows him to draw freely without any physical effort, turned out to be especially close to him - he could preserve the free and lively manner of linear-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 him paintings, the artist's juicy prints are distinguished by the expressiveness of the figurative structure and the amazing subtlety of execution.

Shishkin produced prints either in separate sheets or in whole series, which he combined into albums that enjoyed great success. The master boldly experimented. He not only crossed out the drawing with a needle, but also painted on the board with paint, put new shadows, sometimes additionally etched the finished image, increased or weakened the intensity of the entire etching or individual places. Often, he modified the printing plate with a dry point, drawing a pattern on a metal board even after etching and supplementing the image with new details. A large number of proof prints made by the artist are known.

Already one of Shishkin's early etchings "Stream in the Forest" (1870) testifies to the solidity of the professional foundation of the engraver, behind which is intense study and creative work. Busy, complex in motive, this etching is reminiscent of those pen and ink drawings that Shishkin performed in the sixties. But in comparison with them, with 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 high poetic generalization while maintaining the same thoroughness in conveying details. For the seventies, such a picture was "Rye" (1878).

On March 9, 1878, the doors of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts were thrown open. Here at that time the sixth exhibition of the Itinerants was housed, which exhibited such outstanding canvases as "Protodeacon" I. E. Repin, "Fireman" and "Prisoner" by N. A. Yaroshenko, "Meeting of the Icon" by K. A. Savitsky, " Evening in Ukraine "A. 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 performance. Kramskoy told Repin: "I will speak in the order in which (in my opinion) things are in their inner dignity at the exhibition. The first place is taken by Shishkina" Rye ".

The painting was painted after the artist's trip to Yelabuga in 1877. Throughout his life, he constantly came to his fatherland, where he seemed to draw new creative strength. The motive found at home, captured in one of the pencil sketches with the 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 the rye around, like the 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 rustling, swaying from the wind, an endless sea spilled around. As if from under the feet of the viewer, a field path runs forward, wriggling 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, inviting and beckoning into the distance.

Shishkin's life-affirming work is in tune with the attitude of the people, who associates with the power and wealth of nature the idea of "happiness, contentment human life". It is not for nothing that on one of the artist's sketches we find the following record:" 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 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 painting has the meaning of a milestone work, which best expressed at that time the path of the itinerant landscape, in which a particular national image Russian nature has acquired a special social significance. The problem of affirming positive ideals, which has matured in the art of critical realism, found in this genre the most complete solution in the painting "Rye".

In the seventies, there is a rapid process of development of landscape painting, its enrichment with new talents. Next to Shishkin, he exhibits at five traveling exhibitions his eight famous paintings AI Kuindzhi, 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, were sharply different, which did not detract from the dignity of each of them. While Shishkin was characterized by a calm contemplation of nature in all the ordinariness of its manifestation, Kuindzhi was characterized by a romantic perception, he was attracted mainly by the effects of lighting and the color contrasts caused by them. The richness of colors and bold generalizations of forms allowed him to achieve special persuasiveness in solving the complex problem of maximally approximating the real power of color in nature and determined the decorative elements inherent in his works. In solving coloristic problems, Shishkin was inferior to Kuindzhi, but he was stronger as a draftsman. It is characteristic that Kuindzhi, who, as a rule, depicted natural phenomena that did not lend itself to long-term study, dispensed with preliminary field studies, while Shishkin considered them the fundamental principle of the creative process.

Along with Kuindzhi at the end of the seventies, V. D. Polenov, the author of the wonderful plein-air genre-landscape paintings "Moscow Courtyard" and "Grandmother's Garden", performed. In 1879, after a three-year hiatus, for the penultimate time he exhibited two landscapes of Savrasov, in whose work features are outlined, foreshadowing the impending decline. And at the Moscow student exhibition of 1879/80, a fine lyrical painting by the young II Levitan, who was in Savrasov's class, "Autumn Day. Sokolniki" appears.

All these works represented different directions within the uniform 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 occupied one of the most prominent places, if not the main thing, 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. school of landscape. In his best works realistic landscape painting rises to one of the highest steps.

In the 80s, Shishkin created many paintings, in the subjects of which he still turns mainly to the life of the Russian forest, Russian meadows and fields, however, touching upon such motifs as the sea coast of the Baltic. 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. Such canvases as "Stream in the Forest (On the Slope") (1880), "Reserve. Pinery"(1881)," Pine Forest "(1885)," In a Pine Forest "(1887) and others are close in character to the works of the previous decade. However, they are interpreted with greater pictorial freedom. art tendencies, refracted by him in his own way. The artist is enthusiastically working on wide in scope, epic in their structure, paintings glorifying the vastness of his native land. Now all the tangible is his desire to convey the state of nature, the expression of images, the purity of the palette. In many works, tracing color and light gradation, he uses the principles of tonal painting.

Success in color was 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 Itinerant artists, found his sketches no less interesting than paintings, and sometimes even more fresh and colorful. Meanwhile, in addition to "Pine Trees illuminated by the sun", and the richly painted, extremely expressive landscape "Oaks. Evening", many of Shishkin's excellent sketches of the best period of his work are hardly mentioned in art history literature. These include "A corner of an overgrown garden. Drain-grass" (1884), "Forest (Shmetsk near Narva)", "At the shores of the Gulf of Finland (Udrias near Narva)" (both 1888), "On sandy ground. Meri- Hovey along the Finnish railroad "(1889, 90?)," Young pines at the sandy cliff. Mary-Hovey along the Finnish railroad "(1890) and a number of others. All of them are distinguished by a heightened sense of the shape and texture of objects, a subtle gradation of nearby shades of color, freedom and a variety of pictorial 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 original works of the master.

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

In 1885 V.D. Polenov exhibited ninety-seven sketches brought from a trip to the East at a traveling exhibition. Shishkin, for the first time, 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 completed 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 artistic 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 designed dark greenery. It is much more picturesque in comparison with the similarly motive painting of 1876 "Apiary in the Forest". The artist brought the hives and the thatched shed closer to the viewer, shortened the detailed story and achieved a large capacity and integrity of the artistic image.

In the eighties and nineties, the artist is increasingly attracted by the changing states of nature, quickly passing moments. Thanks to his interest in a light-airy environment, for 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, a sketch "Krestovsky Island in the Fog", in 1889 - "Morning in a Pine Forest" and "Fog", in 1890 - again "Fog" and, finally, "Misty Morning" (landscape exhibited at the twenty-fifth traveling exhibition).

Among all the artist's works, the painting "Morning in a Pine Forest" is the most widely known. The idea was suggested to Shishkin by K. A. Savitsky, but the possibility is not excluded that the landscape of 1888 "Fog in a pine forest", written, in all likelihood, like "Windbreak", after a trip to the Vologda forests, served as the impetus for the appearance of this canvas. Apparently, "Fog in a Pine Forest" successfully exhibited at a traveling exhibition in Moscow (now in a private collection in Czechoslovakia) gave Shishkin and Savitsky a mutual desire to paint a landscape similar in motive, including a peculiar 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 in Czecho-Slovakia, its background with a patch of dense forest resembles a distant view of the oil sketch of the painting "Morning in a Pine Forest" belonging to the State Tretyakov Gallery. And this once again confirms the possibility of the relationship between the two pictures. Apparently, according to Shishkin's sketch (that is, as they were conceived by the landscape painter), Savitsky painted the bears in the picture itself. These bears, with some differences in posture and in number (at first there were two), appear in all preparatory sketches and sketches of Shishkin. And there were a lot of them. In the State Russian Museum alone, seven pencil sketches are kept. Savitsky made the bears so well that he even signed with Shishkin on the picture. However, P.M. Tretyakov, who acquired it, removed the signature, deciding to approve only Shishkin's authorship for this painting. Indeed, in it "from the concept to the execution, everything speaks of the manner of painting, of the creative method, characteristic of Shishkin."

An entertaining genre motif introduced into the picture largely contributed to its popularity, but true value the work was a perfectly expressed state of nature. It's not just deaf Pine forest, namely, morning in the forest with its not yet dispersed fog, with easily pink tops of huge pines, cold shadows in the thickets. You can feel the depth of the ravine, the wilderness. The presence of a bear family, located on the edge of this ravine, gives the viewer a feeling of remoteness and deafness of the wild forest.

At the turn of the eighties and nineties, Shishkin turned to the relatively rare theme of winter numbness of nature and painted the big picture "Winter" (1890), setting in it the difficult task of conveying barely noticeable reflexes and almost monochrome painting. Everything is frozen and immersed in the shade. Only in the depths a ray of sun illuminated the clearing, slightly staining it in a pinkish tone. This makes the snow, which lies in a thick layer on the ground, looks even bluer on the branches of the 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 Itinerants, 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 convinced supporter of the educational, ideological and artistic program of the Wanderers, who actively participated in his work in its implementation, he proudly wrote in 1896: traveling exhibition... And from these timid, but firmly outlined steps, a whole path and a glorious path has developed, a path that can be safely proud of. The idea, organization, meaning, purpose and aspirations of the Partnership have created an honorable place for it, if not the main thing, in the environment of Russian art.

On the eve of the XX century, when various trends and directions arise, there is a search for new art styles, forms and techniques, Shishkin continues to confidently follow his once chosen path, creating life-like, meaningful and typical images of Russian nature. The painting "Ship Grove" (1898) became a worthy completion of his integral and original work - a canvas, classic in terms of the completeness and versatility of the artistic image, the perfection of the composition.

The basis of this landscape was the nature sketches performed 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 for almost half a century. creative life... The sketch-version, kept in the State Russian Museum, has the author's inscription: "Korabelnaya Afonasovskaya grove near Yelabuga". The fact that the artist, creating a picture, was based on vivid, concrete impressions, gives it a special persuasiveness. In the center, powerful trunks of century-old pines illuminated by the sun are highlighted. Dense crowns cast a shadow on them. In the distance - permeated with warm light, as if the boron space beckons to itself. Cutting off the tops of trees with a frame (a technique often found in Shishkin's), he enhances the impression of the enormity of 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 the depiction of a coniferous forest.

As always, he slowly talks about the life of this forest on a fine summer day. Emerald grass and greyish green milkweed descend to a shallow stream running over stones and sand. The hedge thrown over it speaks of the close presence of a person. Two fluttering yellow butterflies above the water, greenish reflections in it, slightly bluish reflexes from the sky, sliding purple shadows on the trunks bring a quivering joy of being, without disturbing the impression of peace spilled in nature. The glade on the right is beautifully painted with grass brown from the sun, dry soil and young shoots rich in color. Various strokes that reveal the shape and texture emphasize the softness of the grass, the fluffiness of the needles, and the strength of the trunks. The color is richly nuanced. Refined skill, the confident hand of the artist is felt in everything.

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 power. The implementation of such a monumental idea as this work testifies that the sixty-six-year-old artist was in full bloom of his creative powers, but that was where his path in art was cut short. On March 8 (20), 1898, he died in his studio at an easel, on which stood a new, just begun painting "Forest Kingdom".

Together with a group of indigenous Itinerants - founders and leaders of the Partnership - Shishkin went a long and glorious way. But in the visual arts late XIX century, a different alignment of artistic forces was observed than before. The desire for new means grew in the work of young painters. artistic expression, the search for other imaginative solutions intensified. It was then that among some of the older artists began to manifest a clear intolerance towards those representatives of the new generation who tried to move away from the established traditions of the Wanderers. Some older Wanderers saw in this retreat not a natural desire for the young to seek new solutions, to continuously move forward, but a retreat from the glorious achievements of the previous generation in its difficult struggle with the moribund academicism. In the past, they were innovators themselves, they now did not recognize the innovations of talented youth. But the perception by the artists of the older generation of the creativity of the young is the touchstone on which the 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, he knew how to appreciate talents. It is significant in this case that he is the first and best artist named V.A. Serov - greatest portrait painter, who made an invaluable contribution to the development of the Russian landscape, who found new subtle means of artistic expression in the depiction of the modest Russian nature.

Among young artists, Shishkin enjoyed well-deserved respect, despite the fact that he professed different aesthetic principles, adhered to a different artistic system. Young people could not help but recognize in him the deepest connoisseur and thoughtful depiction of Russian nature, could not help but appreciate his high skill. Shishkin's sketches, drawings, etchings were that visual "living school" about which Kramskoy spoke at one time. Of course, Shishkin himself, his experience, his knowledge, his direct studies with them, was the same school for aspiring artists.

Shishkin himself later years, while remaining faithful to his principles and the manner developed over the years, he carefully looked at the works of young people, 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 bright representative art of critical realism, the spokesman for democratic ideals, the bearer of the best traditions of itinerant movement.

Shishkin Ivan Ivanovich died on March 20, 1898, as a true artist - at work.

"If the pictures of nature of our dear and dear Rus are dear to us," wrote V.M. Vasnetsov to Shishkin in 1896, resinous forests full of quiet poetry. Your roots have grown so deeply and firmly 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 fuss and compromise.

His innovation lies in stability, purity of traditions, in the primacy and integrity of the feeling 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 faithful once taken tuning fork of a mighty song - this is what is characteristic of Shishkin's epic makeup.