Russian landscape painter Ivan Shishkin

Russian landscape painter Ivan Shishkin
Inspired by the poem of Mikhail Lermontov ‘Pine’ (1841), Russian artist Ivan Shishkin created his painting “In the northern wilderness” in 1891. Here is my translation of the poem:

In the northern wilderness stands alone
On the bare top of a mountain – a pine,
Asleep, it’s swaying, and loosing snow
In which it dressed like in mantle.

And it dreams of that far away desert,
In the region where the sun rises,
One and sad on the hot cliff
Beautiful palm tree grows.

Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin (1832-1898) – the great Russian landscape painter, academician. Shishkin studied painting at the School of Painting in Moscow, and then continued his education at the Academy of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg. Having the opportunity to travel, Shishkin was in Germany, in Munich, then in Switzerland in Zurich. In 1866 he returned to St. Petersburg. Traveling throughout Russia, he then presented his paintings at exhibitions. Among the Russian landscape painters Shishkin undoubtedly belongs to the most powerful artists.

Russian landscape painter Ivan Shishkin

In all his works, he is an amazing connoisseur of plant forms, reproducing them with a keen understanding of both general and distinguishing features of the smallest of all species of trees, shrubs and grasses. Beginning painting a pine or fir forests, some pine and spruce, he received their true image, fully explained soil and climate, where the artist made them grow. Whether he portrayed oak or birch, he depicted the true form in the leaves, branches, trunks, roots and all the details. Most area under the trees – rocks, sand or clay, uneven ground, overgrown with ferns and other forest grasses, dry leaves, twigs, fallen trees and so forth – he received a perfect reality.

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