Ivan Shishkin (1832-1898)

The Russian landscape history of the end of the 19th century is associated with the name Ivan Shishkin. Shishkin’s works became the mainstream in national painting and found huge popularity. Before Shishkin nobody has narrated to the audience about the love to his native town, to the soft beauty of the northern nature.

Ivan Shishkin was born on 13(25) January, 1832 in the city Elabuga. The talented boy found the best friend in his father. The rather poor merchant, Ivan Shishkin imparted to the son interest to the olden times, to nature, to reading. He was encouraging in the boy the love to the drawing, which awoke very early.

Shishkin began the regular classes in August, 1852 in the Moscow School of painting and sculpture. In the School Shishkin’s interest to -landscape was defined at once. “A landscape-painter is a perfect artist. He feels more deeply, purer.” Shishkin wrote in his diary. The Artist constantly drew in the wood that was situated near the Moscow (in Sokolniki). He was studying the forms of plants, piercing in the anatomy of a nature. He did it with huge enthusiasm. To come nearer to a nature already became his main idea for him in that time. In the Academy of Applied Arts, where he had entered in 1856, Shishkin became quickly the best among the other schoolboys because of his qualification and his brilliant abilities. In 1857 he received two small silver medals - for the picture "In vicinities of St. Petersburg" (1856) and for the drawings that he had sketched during the summer in Dubki.

The real school for Shishkin was Valaam, serving by a place of summer work on a nature to the academic schoolboys, who were going to become the landscape-painters. In the nature itself Shishkin was searching for the grounds, which would allow him opening it for the audience. Having graduated at the Academy with the large gold medal in 1860, Shishkin received the right on trip abroad as the beneficiary.