Ivan shishkin

Shishkin was the son of a merchant. He studied art with a characteristic thoroughness, first at the School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture in Moscow and then at the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts. In 1860 he was awarded the Academy’s Gold Medal and granted a stipend to travel to Munich, Prague, and Düsseldorf, Ger., to add final lustre to his art education. It was mainly the Düsseldorf school that furthered his inclination toward exact reproduction of nature and linear severity. His ink drawings were received with much acclaim in Germany, and while he was there he became familiar with the techniques of etching and lithography, which at the time had not yet gained a foothold in Russia.

Shishkin’s “portrait” of Russian nature—expansive and rich, not subject to time and not dependent on human emotion—became associated with the staunchness and power of the Russian national character and with patriotic overtones of national history. Being in this sense an incarnation of the “Russian spirit,” Shishkin’s paintings entered everyday life in Russia, becoming the decoration on candy wrappers and illustrations in textbooks.