Tree Drawings by Ivan Shishkin
Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin (Russian: Ива́н Ива́нoвич Ши́шкин; 25 January 1832 - 20 March 1898) was a Russian landscape painter connected with the Peredvizhniki movement.
Shishkin was born in Yelabuga in Vyatka Governorate (now Republic of Tatarstan) and graduated from the Kazan gymnasium. He then spent four years studying at Moscow's School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture. After that, he studied at the Saint Petersburg Imperial Academy of Arts from 1856 to 1860, graduating with the highest honours and a gold medal. He got an imperial scholarship to pursue his studies in Europe.
Five years later, Shishkin joined the Imperial Academy of St. Petersburg, where he taught painting from 1873 until 1898. Shishkin also taught landscape painting at St. Petersburg's Highest Art School.
Shishkin spent some time living and working in Switzerland and Germany on a scholarship from the St. Petersburg Imperial Academy of Arts. On his return to Saint Petersburg, he joined the Circle of the Itinerants and the Society of Russian Watercolorists. He also participated in shows at the Academy of Arts, the All-Russian Exhibition in Moscow (1882), the Nizhniy Novgorod (1896), and the World Fairs (Paris, 1867 and 1878; Vienna, 1873). Shishkin's painting technique was based on analytic observations of nature. He became recognised for his woodland landscapes, but he was also an excellent draughtsman and printer.
Ivan Shishkin had a dacha in Vyra, south of St. Petersburg. There, he created some of his best landscape paintings. His paintings are known for their poetic depictions of seasons in the woods, untamed environment, animals, and birds. In 1891, he was named professor-director of the Advanced Art School's landscape class. He finished The Pine Grove in 1898 and died on March 20, 1899, in St. Petersburg while working on his next painting.
Lyudmila Zhuravlyova, a Soviet astronomer, found minor planet 3558 in 1978 and named it after him "Shishkin".
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