Morning in a pine forest description of bears. Morning in a pine forest description

Over the past century " Morning in a pine forest", Which the rumor, disdaining the laws of arithmetic, baptized in" Three Bears ", has become the most replicated picture in Russia: Shishkin bears look at us from candy wrappers, greeting cards, wall tapestries and calendars; even of all the cross-stitch kits sold in the Vse for Needlework stores, these bears are the most popular.

By the way, what does morning have to do with it ?!

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

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

Only once did Tretyakov explain the motives for his action.

- In the picture, - the patron answered, - everything, from the concept to the execution, speaks about the manner of painting, about the creative method, peculiar to Shishkin.

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

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

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

Perhaps that is why Ivan Vasilyevich did not scold his son when, after four years of study at the Kazan gymnasium, he left school with a firm intention not to return to school. "Well, he threw it and threw it," Shishkin Sr. shrugged his shoulders, "not everyone can build bureaucratic careers."

But Ivan was not interested in anything except hiking in the woods. Every time he ran out of the house before dawn, he returned after dark. After supper, he silently locked himself in his room. He had no interest in either female society or the company of his peers, to whom he seemed a forest savage.

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

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

Relatives, who had already waved their hand at the ignoramus, even perked up when they learned about their son's desire to become an artist. Especially the father, who dreamed of glorifying the Shishkin family for centuries. True, he believed that he himself would become the most famous Shishkin - as an amateur archaeologist who excavated the ancient Devil's settlement near Elabuga. Therefore, my father allocated money for training, and in 1852, 20-year-old Ivan Shishkin went to conquer Moscow.

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

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

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

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

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

“I'm tired of Petersburg,” he wrote to his parents in the winter of 1858. - We were today at Admiralteyskaya Square, where, as you know, the color of the Petersburg Shrovetide. Such all rubbish, nonsense, vulgarity, and for this vulgar mess, the most respectable public, the so-called superior, flock on foot and in carriages to kill part of their boring and idle time and immediately gaze at how the lower audience is having fun. And we, people who make up an average audience, really do not want to watch ... "

And here is another letter, written in the spring: “This incessant thunder of carriages appeared on the cobblestone pavement, though it does not bother me in winter. The first day of the holiday will come, countless people will appear on the streets of all Petersburg, cocked hats, helmets, cockades and the like to make visits. It's a strange thing, in St. Petersburg every minute you meet either a pot-bellied general, or an officer's rail, or a crooked official - these personalities are simply innumerable, you might think that the whole of St. Petersburg is full only of them, these animals ... "

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

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

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

Ilya Repin, who studied a little later at the Academy, wrote: “Real nature, beautiful nature was recognized only in Italy, where there were always inaccessible examples of the highest art. The professors saw all this, studied, knew, and led their students to the same goal, to the same unfading ideals ... "

I.I. Shishkin. Oak.

But it wasn't just about ideals.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Abroad, Shishkin quickly yearned for his homeland.

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

“Out of innocent modesty, we reproach ourselves for not being able to write, or that we write rudely, tastelessly and differently from abroad,” he wrote in his diary. - But, really, as we saw here in Berlin - we have much better, I, of course, take in common. I have not seen anything more callous and tasteless than painting here at the permanent exhibition - and here there are not only Dresden artists, but from Munich, Zurich, Leipzig and Dusseldorf, more or less all representatives of the great German nation. We, of course, look at them with the same obsequiousness as at everything abroad ... Until now, from everything that I saw abroad, nothing has led to the stunning, as I expected, but, on the contrary, I became more confident in myself ... "

He was not seduced by the mountain views of Saxon Switzerland, where he studied with the famous animal painter Rudolf Koller (so, contrary to rumor, Shishkin knew how to draw animals perfectly), nor the landscapes of Bohemia with miniature mountains, nor the beauty of old Munich, nor Prague.

“Now I just realized that I got to the wrong place,” Shishkin wrote. "Prague is nothing wonderful, its surroundings are poor too."

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

Only the ancient Teutoburg forest with century-old oaks, which still remembered the times of the invasion of the Roman legions, briefly captivated his imagination.

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

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

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

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

What could be more common than a tube?

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

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

I.I. Shishkin. Forest.

And this was another reason why the Russian landscape could not gain recognition in Russian art: the painters simply redrawn landscapes from the paintings of European masters, not being able to draw from nature.

Of course, the reader may object: if an artist cannot paint from life, then why could they not paint from memory? Or do you just invent everything out of your head?

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

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

“On my largest canvas, I began to paint rafts. A whole line of rafts was going straight towards the viewer along the wide Volga, - the artist wrote. - Ivan Shishkin brought me to the destruction of this picture, and showed this picture to him.

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

- No, I was just imagining ...

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

The word "frivolous" sounded like a sentence, and Repin destroyed the painting.

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

Of course, Shishkin was far from the first artist who dreamed of painting large canvases with Russian landscapes. But how to move the workshop to the forest or to the river bank? The artists had no answer to this question. Some of them built temporary workshops (such as Surikov and Aivazovsky), but moving such workshops from place to place was too expensive and troublesome even for eminent painters.

River.

They also tried to pack the finished mixed dyes in pig bladders, which were tied in a knot. Then they pierced the bubble with a needle in order to squeeze a little paint onto the palette, and the resulting hole was plugged with a nail. But more often than not, the bubbles just burst on the way.

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

An easel appeared next, that is, a portable box with paints and a canvas holder that you could carry with you.

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

Shishkin's return to Russia with new colors and new painting technologies caused a sensation.

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

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

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

Changes took place in Shishkin's personal life: he married Evgenia Alexandrovna Vasilyeva, the sister of his student. Soon, the newlyweds had a daughter, Lydia, and then their sons Vladimir and Konstantin were born.

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

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

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

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

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

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

It was Shishkin's last happy summer.

First, a telegram came from Yelabuga: “This morning, Father Ivan Vasilyevich Shishkin died. I consider it my duty to notify you. "

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

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

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

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

To top it off, the youngest son Konstantin also died.

Ivan Ivanovich became not himself. I did not hear what my relatives were saying, I did not find a place for myself either at home or in the workshop, even endless wanderings in the forest could not ease the pain of loss. Every day he went to visit his own graves, and then, after dark, he returned home, he drank cheap wine until he was completely unconscious.

Friends were afraid to come to him - they knew that Shishkin, being not himself, could well rush at the uninvited guests with his fists. The only one who could comfort him was Savitsky, but he drank himself to death in Paris, mourning the death of his wife Ekaterina Ivanovna, who either committed suicide or died in an accident, poisoned by carbon monoxide.

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

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

He painted the canvas "Rye" - especially for the VI Traveling Exhibition. A huge field, which he sketched somewhere near Yelabuga, became for him the embodiment of his father's words read in one of the old letters: "A man lies death, then a judgment, what a man sows in life, he will reap."

In the background are mighty pines and - as an eternal reminder of death, which is always near - a huge dried tree.

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

In the same year, he met a young artist Olga Lagoda. The daughter of an actual state councilor and courtier, she was one of the first thirty women who were admitted to study as volunteers at the Imperial Academy of Arts. Olga got into Shishkin's class, and the eternally gloomy and shaggy Ivan Ivanovich, who had also grown a loose Old Testament beard, was suddenly surprised to find that at the sight of this short girl with bottomless blue eyes and a bang of brown hair, his heart began to pound a little harder than usual, and hands suddenly begin to sweat like a snotty schoolboy.

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

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

No, Shishkin didn't drink this time. He went headlong into work, trying to provide everything necessary for two daughters left without mothers.

Without giving himself the opportunity to become limp, finishing one picture, he pulled the canvas onto a stretcher for the next. He began to study etchings, mastered the technique of engravings, illustrated books.

- Work! - said Ivan Ivanovich. - To work every day, going to this job as to the service. There is no need to wait for the notorious "inspiration" ... Inspiration is the work itself!

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

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

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

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

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

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

And then Ivan Ivanovich made a pencil sketch of the future picture, recalling how on Gorodomlya Island, on Lake Seliger, he saw mighty pines, which were uprooted by a hurricane and broke in half - like matches. Anyone who has seen such a catastrophe himself will easily understand: the very sight of forest giants torn to pieces makes people dumbfounded and fearful, and a strange empty space remains in the forest tissue at the place of the fall of trees in the fabric of the forest - such a defiant emptiness that nature itself does not tolerate, but that's it. -taki is forced to endure; The same unhealed emptiness after the death of loved ones formed in the heart of Ivan Ivanovich.

Mentally remove the bears from the picture, and you will discover the scope of the catastrophe that happened in the forest, which happened quite recently, judging by the yellowed pine needles and the fresh color of the wood in the place of the break. But there are no other reminders of the storm left. Now the soft golden light of God's grace is pouring from heaven into the forest, in which His angels-bear cubs bathe ...

The painting "Bear Family in the Forest" was first presented to the public at the 17th Traveling Exhibition in April 1889, and on the eve of the exhibition the canvas was bought by Pavel Tretyakov for 4,000 rubles. Of this amount, Ivan Ivanovich gave his co-author a fourth part - a thousand rubles, which caused an insult to his old friend: he was counting on a more fair assessment of his contribution to the picture.

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

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

It turns out that questions of such a delicate nature cannot be hidden in the bag, the courts and gossip went, and I had to sign the painting with Sh, and then share the most trophies of purchase and sale. The painting is sold for 4 tons, and I am a participant in the 4th share! I carry a lot of bad things in my heart on this matter, and out of joy and pleasure, something opposite happened.

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

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

When, in May 1889, the 17th Traveling Exhibition moved to the halls of the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, Tretyakov saw that the Bear Family in the Forest was already hanging with two signatures.

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

Probably, Shishkin himself adhered to the same opinion, who invited a friend to participate only because of his idea.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In all eras, genre painting was considered the most vivid display of people's lives and the reality around them. Therefore, there has always been so excessively great interest of the audience in this type of fine art. And today I would like to show readers a magnificent gallery of plot paintings by the famous Russian Itinerant artist Konstantin Savitsky, who gave the descendants a piece of the history of Russia in the 19th century. And also tell about the legendary history of co-authorship with Ivan Shishkin, which Pavel Tretyakov personally canceled.

https://static.kulturologia.ru/files/u21941/219414246.jpg "alt =" (! LANG: “Morning in a pine forest.” Joint work of Ivan Shishkin and Konstantin Savitsky. Tretyakov Gallery." title=""Morning in a pine forest". Joint work of Ivan Shishkin and Konstantin Savitsky. Tretyakov Gallery." border="0" vspace="5">!}

And, remembering this talented master, one cannot fail to mention one delicate story from his life. Many people know that it is Savitsky who is the author of the famous bears depicted on Shishkin's painting "Morning in a Pine Forest." Initially, even in the corner of the canvas there were two autographs - Shishkin and Savitsky. However, the name of the second author was erased with his own hand by Pavel Tretyakov, who bought "Morning" for his gallery.

https://static.kulturologia.ru/files/u21941/219417441.jpg "alt =" (! LANG: Hunter.

And the incident with the removal of the second autograph occurred most likely due to the fact that when buying the painting, Tretyakov saw only Shishkin's signature, Savitsky signed a little later. Therefore, when the painting was delivered to the gallery, the indignant philanthropist ordered to bring turpentine and erased the second signature with his own hand. This act of Tretyakov did not affect the friendship of the two artists in any way. Ivan Shishkin then gave the fourth part of the fee, that is, the sum of a thousand rubles to Savitsky for co-authorship.

https://static.kulturologia.ru/files/u21941/219416499.jpg" alt="Dark people.

In that difficult period of his friend's life, Ivan Ivanovich made an entry in his diary, noting that Providence makes the artist suffer, bringing up God's gift in him. And that was indeed the case. In his life, Konstantin Apollonovich had to experience the bitterness of loss more than once, but his favorite work always saved him.

Several pages from the artist's biography

Konstantin Apollonovich Savitsky (1844-1905) was a man of exceptional intelligence and talent, a brilliant Russian genre painter-realist, academician, member of the Association of Traveling Art Exhibitions, the first director of the Penza Art School. He happened to live and create in an era of political and social turmoil, which is directly reflected in his works.

Strong, memorable images of ordinary people from the people - peasants, workers and soldiers - became the protagonists of his works.

https://static.kulturologia.ru/files/u21941/219417709.jpg" alt=""Memorial service on the 9th day at the cemetery." (1885). Author: K.A. Savitsky." title=""Memorial service on the 9th day at the cemetery." (1885).

By that time, Konstantin had definitely dreamed of the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts, and three years later he left the boarding house and entered the class of historical painting as a volunteer. However, he was forced to leave almost immediately after admission. Affected by the insufficient training of a gifted young man who aspired to become a real painter.

Two years of persistent independent training and Savitsky is again a student at the Academy. Now a talented young artist is successfully mastering the academic course and very soon becomes one of the best students of the academy, having received six silver medals and one gold medal for his competitive works.

https://static.kulturologia.ru/files/u21941/219417940.jpg" alt=""To the war." (1888).

Returning to St. Petersburg in 1883, Savitsky began teaching at the technical drawing school in St. Petersburg, then at the Moscow School, and finally moved to Penza, where he became the first director of a painting gallery and a city art school. And it should be noted that in this position the painter proved himself to be a very professional manager. Konstantin Apollonovich personally developed a curriculum for his students, who, as a result of training, received excellent training, which allowed the best graduates of the school to be enrolled in the Academy of Arts without entrance exams.

Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin is rightfully considered a great landscape painter. He, like no one else, managed to convey through his canvases the beauty of the pristine forest, the endless expanses of the fields, the cold of the harsh land. When looking at his paintings, one often gets the impression that a breeze is about to blow or a crackling of branches is heard. Painting so occupied all the artist's thoughts that he even died with a brush in his hand, sitting at an easel.

Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin was born in the small provincial town of Elabuga, located on the banks of the Kama. As a child, the future artist could wander through the forest for hours, admiring the beauty of pristine nature. In addition, the boy painstakingly painted the walls and doors of the house, surprising those around him. In the end, the future artist in 1852 enters the Moscow School of Painting and Sculpture. There, teachers help Shishkin recognize exactly the direction in painting that he will follow throughout his life.

Landscapes became the basis of Ivan Shishkin's work. The artist skillfully conveyed the species of trees, grasses, boulders overgrown with moss, uneven soil. His paintings looked so realistic that it seemed that the sound of a stream or the rustle of leaves was about to be heard somewhere.

Without a doubt, one of the most popular paintings by Ivan Shishkin is "Morning in a pine forest"... The painting depicts more than just a pine forest. The presence of bears seems to indicate that somewhere far away, in the wilderness, there is a unique life.

Unlike his other canvases, this artist did not paint alone. Bears belong to the brush of Konstantin Savitsky. Ivan Shishkin judged in fairness, and both artists signed the picture. However, when the finished canvas was brought to the buyer Pavel Tretyakov, he became angry and ordered to erase Savitsky's name, explaining that he ordered the painting only to Shishkin, and not to two artists.

The first meetings with Shishkin aroused mixed feelings among those around him. He seemed to them a sullen and taciturn person. In the school he was even called a monk behind his back. In fact, the artist revealed himself only in the company of his friends. There he could argue and joke.

"Morning in a Pine Forest" is a painting by Russian artists Ivan Shishkin and Konstantin Savitsky. Savitsky painted bears, but the collector Pavel Tretyakov erased his signature, so Shishkin alone is often indicated as the author of the picture.

The picture is popular due to the compositional inclusion of elements of animalistic plot in the landscape canvas. The painting conveys in detail the state of nature seen by the artist on the Gorodomlya island. Shown is not a dense dense forest, but sunlight making its way through the columns of tall trees. One can feel the depth of the ravines, the power of age-old trees, the sunlight, as it were, timidly peers into this dense forest. The frolicking bear cubs feel the approach of morning.

Presumably, the idea of ​​the picture was suggested to Shishkin by Savitsky, who later acted as a co-author and depicted the figures of bear cubs (according to Shishkin's sketches). These bears, with some differences in posture and number (at first there were two of them), appear in preparatory drawings and sketches (for example, the State Russian Museum contains seven versions of Shishkin's pencil sketches). The animals turned out in Savitsky so well that he even signed the picture with Shishkin. Savitsky himself told his relatives: "The painting was sold for 4 thousand, and I am a participant in the 4th share."

After purchasing the painting, Tretyakov removed Savitsky's signature, leaving the authorship to Shishkin, because in the painting, Tretyakov said, "from the concept to the execution, everything speaks about the manner of painting, about the creative method peculiar to Shishkin."

In the inventory of the gallery initially (during the life of the artists Shishkin and Savitsky), the painting was listed under the title "Bear family in the forest" (and without specifying the name of Savitsky).

The Russian prose writer and publicist V.M. Mikheev wrote the following words in 1894:
Look away into this gray mist of the forest distance, into the "Bear Family in the Forest" ... and you will understand with what connoisseur of the forest, with what strong objective artist you are dealing. And if the integrity of your impression is hindered by something in his paintings, then it is not a detail of the forest, but, for example, the figures of bears, the interpretation of which makes you want a lot and spoils the overall picture a lot, where the artist placed them. Obviously, the forester is not nearly as strong at depicting animals.

Reproductions of "Morning in a Pine Forest" were widely replicated in the USSR. However, this began even before the revolution, in particular, since the 19th century, a reproduction has been reproduced on the wrapper of the Clubfoot Bear chocolates. Due to this, the picture is well known among the people, often - under the name "Three Bears" (although there are four bears in the picture). Because of this candy-wrapped replication, the picture began to be perceived in the Soviet and post-Soviet cultural space as an element of kitsch.

Probably perhaps the most famous painting of the Russian artist-painter is "Morning in a pine forest". This picture is known and loved by many since childhood for the wrapping of no less favorite chocolates "Mishka clubfoot". Only a few paintings by Russian artists can compete with the popularity of this work of painting.

The idea of ​​the painting was at one time suggested to the painter Shishkin by the artist Konstantin Savitsky, who acted as a co-author and depicted the figures of bears. As a result, the animals turned out for Savitsky so well that he signed the picture with Shishkin. But when the painting was acquired by Pavel Mikhailovich Tretyakov, he removed Savitsky's signature, and the authorship remained only with Shishkin. Tretyakov believed that everything in the picture speaks of the manner of painting and the creative method that were characteristic of Shishkin.

The canvas depicts a dense thicket of pine forest with a fallen broken tree at the edge of a ravine. The left side of the picture still retains the twilight of a cold night of a dense pine forest. Moss covers torn tree roots and fallen, broken branches. The soft green grass creates a sense of coziness and tranquility. But the rays of the rising sun have already gilded the tops of age-old pines and made the morning haze glow. And although the sun is not yet able to completely dispel this night fog, which hides the entire depth of the pine forest from the viewer's eyes, the cubs are already playing on the broken trunk of a fallen pine tree, and the mother bear is guarding them. One of the cubs, having climbed the trunk closer to the ravine, stood on its hind legs and looked back with curiosity at the light of the haze from the rising sun.

We see not just a monumental canvas about the greatness and beauty of Russian nature. Before us is not only a deaf dense frozen forest with its deep power, but a living picture of nature. Sunlight, making its way through the haze and columns of tall trees, makes you feel the depth of the ravine behind the fallen pine tree, the power of age-old trees. The light of the morning sun still looks timidly into this pine forest. But animals already feel the approach of a sunny morning - frolicking bears and their mother. The picture is filled with movement and life thanks not only to these four bears, who love solitude in the forest, but also to the painter's accurately depicted transitional moment of the awakening early sunny morning after a cold night. The peaceful smile of the forest breaks down: the day will be sunny. The viewer begins to think that the birds have already begun to sing their morning songs. The beginning of a new day promises light and tranquility!