Ivan Shishkin 9781783100811, 1783100818, 9781783102532, 1783102535

Table of contents :
Content: Ivan Shishkin and Russian Landscape Painting --
Ivan Shishkin and the Itinerants --
The Life and Times of Ivan Shishkin --
The Forest and the Steppe and Selected Poems --
Graphic Works of Ivan Shishkin --
Biography and Photographic Archives.

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Ivan

SHISHKIN

Authors: Victoria Charles and Irina Shuvalova

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© Confidential Concepts, worldwide, USA © Parkstone Press International, New York, USA Image-Bar www.image-bar.com All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or adapted without the permission of the copyright holder, throughout the world. Unless otherwise specified, copyright on the works reproduced lies with the respective photographers, artists, heirs or estates. Despite intensive research, it has not always been possible to establish copyright ownership. Where this is the case, we would appreciate notification. ISBN: 978-1-78310-081-1

Victoria Charles and Irina Shuvalova

Ivan Shishkin

Content Ivan Shishkin and Russian Landscape Painting

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Ivan Shishkin and the Itinerants

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The Life and Times of Ivan Shishkin

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The Forest and the Steppe and Selected Poems

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Graphic Works of Ivan Shishkin

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Biography and Photographic Archives

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Index

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Ivan Shishkin and Russian Landscape Painting

Self-Portrait, 1886. Etching, 24 x 17 cm. The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg. (p. 4) Boulders in a Forest. Valaam (study), c. 1858. Oil on canvas, 32 x 43 cm. The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg.

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From the 18th Century to the 1860s I t was only in the last quarter of the 18th century and during the first part of the 19th century that landscape painting in Russia emerged as a separate genre. Artists such as Fyodor Alexeyev (1753-1824), Fyodor Matveyev (1758-1826), Maxim Vorobiev (1787-1855), and Sylvester Shchedrin (1791-1830) produced masterpieces of landscape painting, although their work was heavily influenced by the Latin tradition – by painters such as Claude Lorrain, Nicolas Poussin, and Canaletto – it is in the work of Venetsianov and his followers (for example, in his Summer: Harvest Time and Spring: Ploughing) that landscape with a truly Russian character makes its first appearance. Two of Venetsianov’s most promising pupils were Nikifor Krylov (1802-1831) and Grigory Soroka (1823-1864). Despite the brief span of their working lives, both of these artists were to have a considerable influence on the painters who came after them. The countryside in Kryiov’s best-known picture, Winter Landscape (1827), is unmistakably Russian, as are the people that enliven it. In order to paint the scene realistically, he had a simple wooden studio erected, looking out over the snow-covered plain to the woodlands visible in the distance. Krylov’s artistic career had barely begun when, at the age of twenty-nine, he succumbed to cholera. Only a small number of his works have survived. Soroka died in even more tragic circumstances. He was one of the serfs belonging to a landowner named Miliukov whose estate, Ostrovki, was close to Venetsianov’s. Conscious of Soroka’s talent, Venetsianov tried to persuade Miliukov to set the young painter free, but without success. (True to his humanitarian ideals, Venetsianov pleaded for the freedom of other talented serf artists and in some cases purchased their liberty himself.) Later, in 1864, Soroka was arrested for his part in local agitation for land reforms and sentenced to be flogged. Before the punishment could be carried out, he committed suicide. One of his most representative paintings is Fishermen: View of Lake Moldino (late 1840s), which is remarkable for the way it captures the silence and stillness of the lake. For a period of thirty or forty years most of the leading Russian landscape painters were taught by Maxim Vorobiev, who became a teacher at the Academy in 1815 and continued to teach there – except for long trips abroad, including an extended stay in Italy – almost up to the time of his death. Vorobiev and Sylvester Shchedrin were chiefly responsible for introducing the spirit of Romanticism into Russian landscape painting, while remaining faithful to the principles of classical art. Especially during the last decade of his life, Shchedrin favoured dramatic settings. Vorobiev went through a phase in which he was attracted by landscapes shrouded in mist or lashed by storms, and both he and Shchedrin delighted in Romantic sunsets and moonlit scenes. Among Vorobiev’s most talented pupils were Mikhaïl Lebedev (1811-1837) — whose landscapes are less overtly Romantic than either Vorobiev’s or Shchedrin’s – and Ivan Aivazovsky (1817-1900), 9

View near St Petersburg, 1853. Oil on canvas, 66.5 x 96 cm. The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg.

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View of Valaam Island. Kukko, 1859-1860. Oil on canvas, 69 x 87.1 cm. The State Russian Museum, St Petersburg.

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one of the most popular scenic painters of his time and certainly the most prolific. Indeed, those who reach such fame in their lifetime are rare. Barely finished with his studies, his name was already circulating throughout Russia. His learning years were situated, in effect, at a critical time. If academic rules were still in force, Romanticism was growing and each and everyone had Karl Briullov’s fabulous The Last Day of Pompeii on their minds. This painting had a great effect on Aivazovsky’s inspiration. He was further taught by Vorobiov, whose teaching was influenced by the Romantic spirit. Aivazovsky remained faithful to this movement all his life, even though he oriented his work towards the realist genre. In October 1837, he finished his studies at the Academy and received a gold medal, synonymous with a trip to foreign countries at the cost of the Academy. But Aivazovsky’s gifts were such that the Council made an unusual decision: he was to spend two summers in the Crimean painting views of southern towns, present them to the Academy, and, after that, leave for Italy. The echo of the success of his Italian exhibitions was even heard in Russia. The Khoudojestvennaïa Gazeta wrote “In Rome, Aivazovsky’s paintings presented at the art exhibition won first prize. Neapolitan Night, Chaos… made such an impression in the capital of fine arts that aristocratic salons, public gatherings, and painters’ studios resound with the glory of the new Russian landscape artist. Newspapers dedicate laudatory lines to him and everyone says and writes that before Aivazovsky no one had shown light, water, and air with such realism and life. Pope Gregory XVI bought Chaos and hung it in the Vatican where only paintings by world-famous painters have the honour of hanging.” Whilst in Paris, he received the gold medal of the Council of the Academy of Paris and was made Knight of the Legion of Honour in 1857! Influenced to some extent by J.M.W. Turner, he created magnificent seascapes, such as Moonlit Night in the Crimea, View of the Sea and Mountains at Sunset, and The Creation of the World. One of Aivazovsky’s most famous works, The Ninth Wave (1850), owes its title to the superstition among Russian sailors that in any sequence of waves, the ninth is the most violent. Like many of his paintings, it bears the imprint of Romanticism: the sea and sky convey the power and grandeur of nature, whilst in the foreground, the survivors of a shipwreck embody human hopes and fears. Although the sea is the dominant theme in the majority of the 6,000 paintings that Aivazovsky produced, he also painted views of the coast and countryside, both in Russia (especially in the Ukraine and Crimea) and during travels abroad. An Old House on the Edge of a Pond, 1860s. Sepia on paper, 33 x 26.5 cm. Kiev National Museum of Russian Art, Kiev.

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The enthusiasm for all things French that had been so prevalent in Russia during the 18th century diminished following the Napoleonic Wars – which is one reason that Russian painters, in common with European artists and writers generally, began to transfer their allegiance to Italy. This trend was reinforced by the Academy’s veneration of antiquity and

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Beech Forest in Switzerland, 1863. Oil on canvas, 51 x 61 cm. The State Russian Museum, St Petersburg.

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View in the Vicinity of Düsseldorf, 1865. Oil on canvas, 105.9 x 150.8 cm. The State Russian Museum, St Petersburg.

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Herd in the Forest, 1864. Oil on canvas, 105 x 140 cm. Picture Gallery of Armenia, Yerevan.

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the Italian Renaissance, and also by the first stirrings of the Romantic movement. Fyodor Matveyev painted little else besides Italian architecture and landscapes. Both Sylvester Shchedrin (who spent the last twelve years of his life in Italy) and Mikhaïl Lebedev delighted in idyllic fishing scenes and tableaux of Italian peasant life. Aivazovsky painted views of Venice and Naples (many of them bathed in moonlight), and Fyodor Alexeyev actually became known as “the Russian Canaletto”. Sylvester Shchedrin entered the Academy of the Arts in Saint Petersburg in the landscape department. He received the gold medal to crown his graduation. The Academy offered him a trip abroad. He left for Italy, but only in 1818, because of the Neapolitan invasion. The most famous work of this period is undoubtedly New Rome, the Castle of the Holy Angel. Indeed, this painting was a great success and Shchedrin had to fill several orders and made several replicas of the painting from different angles. He lived in Rome and then in Naples. Orders were abundant and Italy was a constant source of inspiration. He worked outdoors, drawing nature, bays, hills, villages, fishermen, etc. Among his works, we can point out View of Serrento (1826) and Terrace on a Seashore (1828). He liked drawing hillsides of vineyards overlooking the sea. His numerous terraces were very well received as, for him, they represented the harmony between people’s lives and nature. After the 1820s, he began drawing night landscapes filled with a tone of anxiety. As he had fallen ill, this certainly explains the change. Most of his works belong to private collectors throughout the world. During the first half of the 19th century a steady stream of Russian painters travelled to Italy or took up residence there – among them the Chernetsov brothers (who also travelled to Egypt, Turkey, and Palestine) and such influential painters as Briullov, Kiprensky, and Alexander Ivanov, whose Appian Way at Sunset and Water and Stones near Pallazzuolo have an almost PreRaphaelite quality. In 1846, Nestor Kukolnik – a fashionable poet and aesthete whose portrait was painted by Briullov – declared that Russian painting had virtually become a “continuation of the Italian school”. The architecture of their own country also caught the imagination of Russian painters. Both Fyodor Alexeyev and Vorobiev (who had been one of Alexeyev’s pupils) produced numerous paintings of the buildings, streets, and squares of Saint Petersburg and Moscow. So did Semion Shchedrin (1745-1804), Sylvester’s uncle. Professor of landscape painting at the Academy from 1776 until his death, he painted charming, sensitive views of the parks and gardens of the Imperial residences near Saint Petersburg – such as Stone Bridge at Gatchina, one of a series of decorative panels that he produced between 1799 and 1801. Alexeyev’s images of the city created by Peter the Great are much more than topographical records. They are executed with a harmony and appreciation of beauty that became a mark of Russian landscape painting throughout the 19th century. The skilful handling of complicated effects of chiaroscuro, both in terms of brushwork and perspective, coupled with the wealth 17

of observation of city life and the detail of the buildings, give his work enduring artistic and historical value. Andreï Martynov (1768-1826) and Stepan Galaktionov (1778-1854) were nicknamed “the poets of Saint Petersburg”. Martynov, who was a pupil of Semion Shchedrin, painted atmospheric views of the avenues of elegant houses, the gardens of Monplaisir, the quays along the Neva lined by palaces and the Smolny Convent, seen from a distance, dissolving into the evening sky. Like Vorobiev and Aivazovsky, he managed to travel widely, and painted in Siberia, Mongolia, and China. Galaktionov (another of Semion Shchedrin’s pupils) was a lithographer and engraver as well as a painter, which is reflected in the careful, detailed character of his work.

From the 1860s to the 1890s With the Itinerants, the status of landscape painting was greatly enhanced. Even artists like Vasily Perov (1833-1882), who were primarily concerned with people rather than landscape, regarded the countryside as something more than a convenient background for portraits and genre paintings. Perov’s The Last Tavern at the City Gates, painted in 1868, is enormously evocative, with its wintry light and the snow-covered road stretching into the Landscape with a Hunter. Valaam Island, 1867. Oil on canvas, 36.5 x 60 cm. The State Russian Museum, St Petersburg.

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distance. Three years later, Fyodor Vassilyev’s The Thaw and Alexeï Savrasov’s The Rooks Have Returned were among the highlights of the Itinerants’ first exhibition. These three paintings in effect mark the watershed between academic Romanticism and a more realistic representation of nature.

A mild-mannered and extraordinarily patient teacher, Savrasov exerted a far-reaching influence on Russian landscape painting. From 1857 to 1882 he was in charge of the landscape studio at the Moscow College of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture, where Levitan, Korovin, and Nesterov were among his pupils. The Rooks Have Returned brilliantly evokes the reawakening of the Russian countryside after the winter. Ivan Shishkin was dubbed the “Tsar of the Forest” by his contemporaries. And rightly so. From his earliest years, he was fascinated by the conifers around his house. After his studies, and with the benediction of his father, who always encouraged him in this path, he left for Moscow in 1952 to study painting. An exhibition of Aivazovsky’s seascapes made a profound impression on him. At the time, realism was highly regarded and academic rules were less strict, which allowed Shishkin to freely develop his deepest inclinations. He was taught by Mokritsky, who was under the influence of Briullov and Venetsianov himself. He encouraged Shishkin in the direction that was his; namely, landscape and nature. Very soon, he asked himself why inspiration was sought in Italian nature, as by Shchedrin and Lebedev, and not in Russian nature. He then left the Academy of Moscow for the Academy of Saint Petersburg in 1856. The most influential painters there at the time were Chernyshevsky and Dobroliubov, for whom painting was meant to be not only a mirror of the surrounding world but a means to transform it. Another important aspect of teaching was the emulation of western painters, especially the Swiss landscape artist Alexandre Calame, who was very popular at the time. Calame influenced many Russian painters, amongst whom Shishkin, who, however, retained a personal touch. At first he often used pencil. A silver medal rewarded his drawings in 1857, shortly thereafter, in 1860,

Ivan Shishkin and Alexander Guinet in a Studio on Valaam Island (study), 1860. Oil on paper, 29 x 36.5 cm. The State Russian Museum, St Petersburg.

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Tree Felling, 1867. Oil on canvas, 122 x 194 cm. The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

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followed by the gold. Shishkin was recognised for the finesse and extreme precision of his strokes. At this time, he was also trying his hand at eau-forte and lithography. His drawings alone represent a large part of his work. The title of academician was given to him in 1865 thanks to his painting View near Dusseldorf. His return to Russia (he had spent three years abroad) was a real joy and a source of inspiration for him. He also made friends with many painters, including Ilya Repin. Speaking of his friend, Repin declared, “The loudest voice was Shishkin’s, he impressed everyone with his youth and his strength, which made him resemble a young forest in his vigorous health, his wolfish appetite, and his beautiful Russian. Numerous and remarkable drawings were born during these evenings. Sometimes, spectators standing behind him uttered terrified ‘Ohs!’ and ‘Ahs!’ upon seeing him, with his thick, rough, cart-driver’s hands, erase what he had just so brilliantly drawn whereas, on the contrary, the drawing became as if by miracle more and more refined.” In 1870, he was among the founders of the Society for Itinerant Exhibitions, with its realist tendency. In 1872, his painting Conifers marked a new phase in the painter’s artistic evolution. Nothing disturbs the calm of this scene. All the details are present: the bear, the flying bird, the pines that are all different from one another. This is thus, once again, a very realistic scene but, at the same time, a new energy emanates from this painting, expressing a harmony that Shishkin had not reached up to that point. This painting was an immense success. The painter became friends with Kramskoi, leader of the Society. With remarkable perception, he corrected Shishkin’s awkwardness. Together, they very often went off to make sketches from nature. However, it was during the 1880s that the artist reached the summit of his art. Pine Forest (1885) or After the Storm (1888) reflects great artistic liberty. Henceforth, the artist alternated light and dark rays, which allowed him to better translate space and to render the landscape to appear more energetic and dynamic. He was increasingly preoccupied with the representation of light, which was previously not the case. His study Sunlit Pines (1886) reveals shadows and reflections that are penetrated by light. During those years, his strokes became supple, dynamic, alert to reflected light while the crosshatching, for its part, was more sensitive and varied. The technical virtuosity and poetic majesty of his painting speak for themselves. Works such as Winter (1890) are unrivalled in the way they convey the texture of snow, whilst his summer landscapes such as Rye and Oak Grove powerfully express the beauty and colours of the Russian countryside. Morning in a Pine Forest, unforgettable for its bears, and Countess Mordvinova’s Forest at Peterhof are among the hundreds of paintings by him that capture the magic of the forest and the character of the trees. Indeed, Morning in a Pine Forest describes the awakening of the forest, the sun coming up, the fog slowly lifting; the foreground is in focus 22

Tevtoburgsky Forest, 1865. Oil on canvas, 67 x 95 cm. The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg.

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Noon. Suburbs of Moscow. Bratsevo, 1866. Oil on canvas, 65 x 59 cm. The Kustodiev Picture Gallery, Astrakhan. Midday. Countryside near Moscow, 1869. Oil on canvas, 111.2 x 80.4 cm. The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

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At the Church Fence. Valaam Island, 1867. Oil on canvas, 92 x 138 cm. Private collection, St Petersburg.

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whereas the trees that are further away have fuzzy contours. The sliding light of the sun which chases the mist away little by little bestows great poetry on this magnificent piece of work. The lyricism of this waking forest is like the signature of Shishkin’s immense maturity with respect to nature. Shishkin died as he was starting work on a new painting, The Kingdom of the Forest, on 20th March 1898, leaving behind him an immense artistic legacy. During the 1870s, the art of Arkhip Kuindzhi underwent an abrupt transformation. Many of the pictures that he painted in the early and mid-1870s – such as The Forgotten Village and The Pack-Ox Road in Mariupol – have muted tones, reflecting the harshness of life in rural Russia. Then Kuindzhi began to experiment with a completely different tonal range, resulting in the marvellously luminous quality of paintings such as After the Rain and the brightness of ones like The Birch Grove, both of which date from 1879. Enthralled by Kuindzhi’s new style, Repin declared that “the illusion of light was his God” and no other artist had “equalled the miraculous success of his paintings”. However, there were artists who tried to emulate Kuindzhi’s “lunar colours”, and ones who made similar use of dramatic light effects, such as Nikolaï Dubovskoi who painted The Calm Before the Storm in 1890. Vassily Polenov was also a master of pleasing light effects, amply demonstrated by his painting Overgrown Pond, a tranquil Moscow backyard, more farmyard than courtyard, that helped to establish a vogue for landscape paintings with prominent genre elements and nuances of light and shade. An enthusiastic advocate of plein-air painting, he succeeded Savrasov as head of the landscape studio at the Moscow College of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture. One of the greatest and best-known landscape painters among the Itinerants, Isaac Levitan, had the advantage of studying under both Savrasov and Polenov. Although his art is perhaps less epic than Shishkin’s, his style and subject matter are more varied – perhaps surprisingly, since he died at a comparatively early age. Levitan, like Shishkin, was a supreme master of the use of colour, composition, and light and shade. All the seasons of the year, the different times of day, and the infinite variety of nature figure in Levitan’s canvases. But, unlike Shishkin, who had a preference for summer landscapes, Levitan preferred the fresh colours of spring and the muted cadences of autumn. When he painted summer scenes, such as Secluded Monastery, he preferred to work in the evening, when the light was softer, or even at dusk. He also joined the Society of Itinerant Exhibitions. He was a contemporary of Nesterov, Korovin, Stepaniv, Bakcheev, and Arkhipov. He was friends with Ostroukhov and Serov. Summing up Levitan’s mature work, Chekhov (who was a friend) said, “Nobody before him achieved such astonishing simplicity and clarity of purpose… and I don’t know whether anyone 27

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Walk in the Forest, 1869. Oil on canvas, 34.3 x 43.3 cm. The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

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after him will ever achieve the same.” Levitan’s paintings are in effect a hymn to nature. Autumn Day: Solniki and Summer Evening: Fence both express the vastness and emptiness of parts of Russia. The Vladimirka Road is a typical Russian plain that stretches out on the canvas and disappears in the distance. The sky is heavy; grey and cloudy, like a lid that weighs on the entire tract of land, crossed by a road alongside of which run paths made by many feet. If the painting is marked by a certain feeling of sadness, an impression of solemnity also emanates from this empty space. The silhouette placed in the painting accentuates the feeling of solitude even further. On the subject of the road, Levitan said (remarks later recounted by the painter Kouvchinnikova), “It’s the Vladimirka road, the Vladimirka along which convoys of countless unhappy souls with chained feet formerly made their way toward the prisons of Siberia.” Further, Evening Bells is a delightful example of his handling of dappled light. He left a permanent mark on Russian painting by bringing to it the feeling of profound typically Levitanian poetry characteristic of Russian nature. This principle came in part from Savrassov because he believed that the particular merit of this artist was to have tried to “reveal in the most simple and ordinary things, the intimate, troubling, and often sad traits that characterise Russian landscapes and act so strongly on the spirit.” (Masters of Art Speak of Art, Vol. 7, Moscow, 1970, p. 198) Indeed, what he appreciated most about this master was his “lyricism and infinite love of his native country”. Levitan’s art is characterised by the breadth of feeling expressed by his palette through various landscapes. Extolling the simplicity of aestheticism before all else, which only a great master has the capacity to succeed in, his paintings were first and foremost a simplification of shape and colour, whilst preserving the most expressiveness and realism possible.

From the 1890s to the Post-Revolutionary Period With its championing of plein air techniques, Impressionism inevitably had a considerable impact on Russian landscape painting; one of the foremost Russian Impressionists was Grabar, whose favourite genre was landscape. In particular, he liked to paint sun and shadows on snow or the contrast between wintry skies and frosted trees, as in February Azure. Other snow scenes that are remarkable for their handling of light and colour include Serov’s Colts at a Watering Place, which makes brilliant use of pastel to capture the frosty sunset, and Surikov’s Zubovsky Boulevard in Winter, where the wintry effect is achieved through the pervasive use of blacks, blues, and browns. The style and mood of Blue Spring by Vassily Baksheyev, an almost exact contemporary of Grabar, are reminiscent of the spring landscapes painted by Savrasov, who was one of his teachers. Baksheyev devoted his energies almost entirely to landscape painting from the early stages of his career, and the beauty of slender birches seen against a clear spring sky was a theme that he returned to again and again. 30

Forest Stream, 1870. Oil on canvas, 79 x 112 cm. The State Russian Museum, St Petersburg.

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Mushroom Hunting, 1870. Oil on canvas, 66.5 x 55.5 cm. The State Russian Museum, St Petersburg.

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Woman with a Boy in the Forest, 1868. Pen and ink with watercolour on paper, varnished, 43.8 x 31.6 cm. The State Russian Museum, St Petersburg.

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Forest Landscape with Herons, 1870. Oil on canvas, 79 x 112 cm. The State Russian Museum, St Petersburg.

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In common with other painters who belonged to the Union of Russian Artists, Konstantin Yuon was attracted by the landscape of Old Russia, particularly by the ancient towns, with their onion-domed churches, monasteries, and bustling markets. His urban landscapes, such as A Sunny Spring Day in Seigiev Posad – are often enlivened by human activity and the movement of birds or animals. After the Revolution, he produced landscapes such as his famous Industrial Moscow Morning (1949), which have a poetic quality expressing the dynamism of industry and the joy of work. Another of the painters associated with the Union of Russian Artists – and also with the Blue Rose group – was Nikolaï Krymov, who played an important role as a teacher of landscape painting in the post-Revolutionary period. Before the Revolution, he experimented with a variety of styles, including a Primitivist phase that resulted in landscapes such as Windy Day, notable for a pictorial quality and colour range inspired by Russian folk art. Both landscape and folk art were important to Chagall and Kandinsky. The lovers and other dramatis personae that fly, loom, or hover in so many of Chagall’s pictures – such as Over Vitebsk – do so above unmistakably Russian houses and streets. The Blue House (1917-1920) features an isba (a traditional wooden house) in the foreground and, beyond it, a very Russian view painted in a style derived from Russian folk art. Chagall also painted a number of delightful views from or through windows, some of them realistic, others in a more sym bolic style. Kandinsky’s early landscapes, such as that of Kochel in the Bavarian Alps, divulge some hints of his future Expressionism. But it was only after he went to live in Murnau – in the mountainous area outside Munich, where he shared a house with Jawlensky – that his move towards abstraction began to emerge, with canvasses such as Boat Trip. This was painted in 1910, the year before he launched the Blaue Reiter (Blue Rider) group together with Franz Marc. One of the most spectacular landscape painters of the mid-20th century was Martiros Saryan. Despite the length of his working life, Saryan’s landscapes never lost their feeling of spontaneity and delight in the scenic grandeur of Armenia and the Caucasus. Paintings such as Constantinople Street at Midday, The Courtyard of my House, and Lake Sevan show the intensity of his colours and his instinct for dramatic composition. Saryan himself described how the central and southern Caucasus had a special enchantment for him: “There I first saw the sun and experienced intense heat. Caravans of camels with bells, nomads coming down from the mountains with tanned faces, with herds of sheep, cows, buffaloes, horses, donkeys, or goats; the bazaars, the street life of the motley crowd; Muslim women slipping silently by in black and pink veils; the big, dark, almond eyes of the Armenian women – it was all that reality of which I had daydreamed back in childhood… Nature, many-faced and many-coloured, forged by a great unknown hand, is my only teacher.”

Evening, 1871. Oil on canvas, 71 x 144 cm. The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow. (pp. 36-37)

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Ivan Shishkin and the Itinerants

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The History of the Society for Itinerant Art Exhibitions T he Society for Itinerant Art Exhibitions stands out as the most popular and well known association of painters in the whole history of Russian art. In the mind of the general public, Russian art of the second half of the 19th century is entirely associated with the work of the Itinerants. Technically this idea is incorrect. The Society’s statute was approved on 2nd November 1870; its first exhibition opened on 29th November 1871. It follows that the 1860s – a period which saw a sharp turn towards democratic ideas and practices in the country’s art – fall outside the bounds of the Society’s history. There were a considerable number of artists who played an important role in the 1860s but did not go on to become members of the Society in the following decade. Subsequently too, there were major figures in contemporary art who remained outside the scope of this particular organisation. In the 1890s, new artistic associations began to appear and it was with them that the future of Russian art was connected. Nonetheless, the identification of an extensive and important stage in the development of the nation’s art with the work of the Itinerants is both natural and justified. Effectively they did determine the appearance and character of Russian art in the second half of the 19th century and represented its chief form of existence. The Society continued to operate for a full halfcentury, providing a focus for the whole complex of social, ethical, and, of course, artistic issues which emerged in Russia following the abolition of serfdom and other major reforms of Alexander II’s reign. It was a specific feature of the situation in the Russian Empire that to a significant extent the task of airing such issues fell to art. In this period, the artists of Western Europe went their own ways. Associations formed with a realist stance and a strongly expressed tendency towards national interests: in Germany, the Malkasten and the Deutsches Künstlerbund, in Bohemia, the Painters’ Association and the Artistic Conversation; in Italy, the Macchiaioli group. There was a distinctly programmatic side to the “Pavilion du réalisme” which Gustave Courbet organised as a consequence of his conflict with the jury of the official Salon in France. Nowhere else in Europe, though, was there such a concentration on public and social concerns as in the work of Russian painters. There are certain chronological ties between the history of the Russian Itinerants and that of the French Impressionists. The two movements were born at the same time, developed in parallel and reached crisis point in the 1890s. The first Impressionist exhibition took place in 1874, three years after the Itinerants’ debut. In the 1860s, that period of growth and gathering strength, the future Impressionists, rejected by the official Salon, displayed their works in the Salon des Refusés. That was in 1863 – the same year that the best pupils walked out of the

Ivan Nikolayevich Kramskoi, Portrait of Ivan Shishkin, 1873. Oil on canvas, 110.5 x 78 cm. The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow. (p. 38)

St Petersburg Academy of Arts and founded an independent union, the Artists’ Artel. These parallels, though, are essentially superficial. There are fundamental differences between the work of the Itinerants and that of the Impressionists. Stylistically we are talking about two distinct phenomena.

Fir-Tree Forest, 1873. Oil on canvas, 144 x 98.5 cm. National Art Museum of the Republic of Belarus, Minsk.

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Pine Wood. Ship’s Timber in Vyatka Province, 1872. Oil on canvas, 117 x 165. The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

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Nevertheless, while acknowledging the originality of the Society for Itinerant Art Exhibitions, I should like in this present work to examine its activities without forgetting about the existence of a wider, European “context”. The Itinerant movement was time both a result and a consistent expression of the general currents which governed the development of art in the 19th century. It is necessary to trace lines of evolution, to draw parallels and analogies, which make it possible to rank Russian art of this era alongside that of the European schools. Comparisons only serve to stress the national individuality of Russian artistic culture and, I trust, will act as a guard against subjective evaluations and deductions. Joining together with others active in creative work was a pressing issue for artists across Europe in the 19th century. The common professional interests of those engaged in art had long been consolidated in various forms of organisation. In the Middle Ages, artists and craftsmen came together in workshops, corporations, and teams in order to jointly fulfil commissions from the spiritual and temporal powers. As a consequence, creative individuality was brought down to the general level. Works of art were produced by collective efforts and quite often remained anonymous. The subsequent development of art was bound up with a gradual increase in the importance of the individual within it. Artists began to sign their works. Talent found support among the Grove, 1865. Oil on canvas, 38 x 62.5 cm. The State Russian Museum, St Petersburg.

wealthy members of society and the labour of a good artist could glorify the name of his patron. Whilst he had gained an awareness of himself as an individual personality, the artist continued to be in a subservient position, dependent on commissions for his existence. Creative figures tended to group around a religious centre, a court, or a palace.

Willows in Sunlight, c. 1870. Oil on canvas, 62 x 85 cm. The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg.

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In the 17th and 18th centuries, academies of art appeared. They taught and trained artists for the establishment, officials who entered the service of the state and reflected its interests in their work.

In one way or another, artists were dependent on the academy, on the position that they occupied within it and on the official commissions that they obtained through it. By the 19th century, these academies were increasingly demonstrating their essentially conservative nature, yet they continued to play the leading role as a focus for artistic forces. The old collective organisations were by that time falling apart and artists felt a need for new types of organisation. The rigid dress of the civil servant felt too restricting for creative personalities, but a withdrawal from state service also meant a rejection of official support. As the century drew on, artists found themselves increasingly at odds with emergent bourgeois society and this sense of isolation led them to seek out the company of others spiritually akin to them. It was a spiritual concern which prompted the formation of the Brotherhood of St Luke – the “Nazarenes” who came together in the early years of the century on the basis of their religious and Romantic orientation. In some ways, their programme was taken up by the English PreRaphaelites. Both groups took old art as their ideal, which, as they saw things, had not been spoilt by modern civilisation and retained the old collective principle of teamwork. In a world increasingly dominated by capitalist industrialisation, however, the archaic idea of this kind of fraternity proved largely utopian. Another form of collective activity which proved more suited to the time was the exhibitory salon, which attained its final form in France following the Revolution. The Salon did not require participants to adhere to a single artistic ideology. It provided a venue for a wide-ranging display of works and served as a meeting-place for artists and the “consumers” of art. In Russia, the St Petersburg Society for the Encouragement of the Arts was founded in the 1820s. With certain amendments to its original constitution and a change of name, it continued to exist for more than a hundred years. The aim of the society was: “To further the successes of

Apiary in a Forest, 1876. Oil on canvas, 80 x 64 cm. Private collection. (p. 46) Birch and Mountain Ash (study), 1878. Oil on canvas, 38 x 28 cm. The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow. (p. 47)

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the fine arts in Russia.” And: “To encourage and promote the talent of Russian artists.” Similar goals were pursued by the Moscow-based Society of Art Lovers, which also enjoyed a long existence (1860-1918). These societies operated continual exhibitions of paintings for sale which were regularly replenished and acted as public art galleries. They also organised annual exhibitions, conducted lotteries and auctions of art, and provided assistance to impoverished and elderly artists. A drawing school was opened in St Petersburg and drawing classes in Moscow. Both organisations played an important role in the development of artistic life in Russia, but, since they operated under royal patronage, they were dependent on the official establishment and fell far short of fully satisfying the artists’ need to come together. The records of the Ministry of Internal Affairs from the 1850s onwards contain a whole series of requests for permission to establish some society, club, or assembly of artists. In 1857, artists and pupils of the Imperial Academy of Arts “proposed to use money they themselves donated to hire decent premises close to the Academy in order to there bring together the prints, costumed figures, paintings, and books on the fine arts in their possession so as to be able to gather in that place in their leisure hours to draw, read books, and generally discuss the arts”. The authorities granted permission for the establishment of this club which set itself the goal of “unselfishly encouraging mutual education in general and the pursuit of perfection in the fine arts”. In 1870 an attempt was made to create, under the auspices of the Academy, a society of artists with a permanent exhibition, in order that a painter might know “the value of his own work” and be in a position “should the need arise to support himself through his own efforts without burdening the government with requests for an allowance”. The leading figure behind the proposal was Professor Alexei Bogoliubov (subsequently an active member of the Society for Itinerant Art Exhibitions) who put the idea to Prince Grigory Gagarin, the vice-president of the Academy. Bogoliubov alluded to the experience of artists elsewhere: “Abroad, artistic labour has long since become an independent activity. There, governments encourage all branches of art through useful institutions as much as they can. Nevertheless, the mass of artists join together in various societies operating in their mutual interest which, in turn, serve the common good. It is a rare town (not to speak of important cities) that does not have an artistic circle and an annual exhibition run by it, to which paintings and sculptural works are sent from all the societies as a result of publications and announcements (“Kunstvereine”). These societies use the money they take from visitors to send the works obtained from one place to the next for the same kind of exhibitions, at which paintings are also sold. In this way a talented artist makes a name for himself, his work is encouraged, and he, with such material support, also has every opportunity to perfect his skills. Pine Wood. Ship’s Timber in Vyatka Province (detail), 1872. Oil on canvas, 117 x 165 cm. The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

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... On behalf of all my fellows, I venture to express our general desire for the establishment here with us of a society similar to those abroad, in St Petersburg and Moscow for the first, and then in all the university cities of Russia.”

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Morning in a Pine Wood (detail), 1889. Oil on canvas, 139 x 213 cm. The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

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Haymaking in Oak Grove, 1874. Oil on canvas, 103 x 167 cm. Private collection.

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The Cut Down Tree, 1875. Oil on canvas, 50 x 80 cm. Private collection.

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In the 19th century, artists were moved, on the one hand, by the desire to come together not around a rich patron, a religious centre, or a palace, but in something like a professional club. On the other, they were brought together by the predicament of how to sell their works. A longing for broad contact with the artistic “consumer” prompted them to seek ways of achieving that end. As a rule, however, they turned for support in such undertakings either to the highest state authorities or to their own official mouthpiece – the Academy of Arts. The first association in Russia to rely entirely on its own resources, as a consequence of the circumstances under which it was formed, was the Artists’ Artel founded in St Petersburg. The Artel (an old Russian term for a cooperative association of craftsmen) was a sort of “dress rehearsal” for the Society for Itinerant Art Exhibitions. The story of its creation is as follows. Fourteen of the best pupils at the Academy of Arts, candidates for its highest award, the Great Gold Medal, refused to take part in the competition as a protest against a system which forbade a free choice of subject for competition entries. They were thirteen painters – Ivan Kramskoi, Bogdan Wenig, Nikolai Dmitriyev-Orenburgsky, Alexander Litovchenko, Alexei Korzukhin, Nikolai Shustov, Alexander Morozov, Mikhail Peskov, Konstantin Makovsky, Firs Zhuravliov, Alexander Grigoryev, Nikolai Petrov, Karl Lemokh; and one sculptor – Vasily Kreitan. They were thrown together to a large extent by chance. These artists, very different in degrees of talent and capacity, were united by the effort to survive in the atmosphere of isolation which engulfed them as soon as they cut themselves off from an official career. After entering into overt conflict with the Academy, these former pupils were obliged to seek means of asserting their right to existence in material terms as well as ideological ones. Rallying together was a matter of pressing necessity. The leading role in the Artel was played by Ivan Kramskoi, who would subsequently become a prominent figure in the Society for Itinerant Art Exhibitions. He was an honest, strong-principled man who, throughout his life, consistently spoke out against administrative attempts to exercise guidance and control over art. He was also extensively and openly in favour of freedom for the individual artist. The day of “the Revolt of the Fourteen” – 9th November 1863 – was the key moment in his biography. He called it “the only day lived honestly”. Kramskoi’s friends and fellow members of the Artel held him in high esteem and listened to his opinions. In the Artel he was known as Doka – “expert”, “master”. Ilya Repin recollected: “Doka had just come back from some lesson, meeting, or other occasion. You could tell by his face that his head contained a great stock of fresh, thrilling ideas and news. His eyes shone with excitement and soon his voice was quivering with passion over a new question that none of them had ever heard before, one so interesting that they forgot even to think about the previous argument, and so for a full half-hour he commanded their general attention.” In his aesthetic conception was a follower of Vissarion Belinsky and Nikolai Chernyshevsky, the theoreticians of realism. Chernyshevsky was the idol of democratically-minded young people.

Rye, 1878. Oil on canvas, 107 x 187 cm. The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow. (pp. 54-55)

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His personal fate, along with his theoretical views and literary works were the object of constant attention. His novel What Is to Be Done?, published in 1863, promoted the idea of working in artels and living in communes, which the artists took up. It should be noted that contemporary accounts suggest that such ventures became very popular at the time among the intelligentsia of non-noble origin. A commune organised in St Petersburg in 1863 included musicians, most notably Modest Mussorgsky. Following the lead set by Kramskoi and his fellows, another artistic artel was established in 1864 headed by Piotr Krestonostsev. Its members included the painters Vasily Maximov, Alexei Kiseliov, Nikolai Koshelev, and Victor Bobrov. That commune existed for about two years, Kramskoi’s survived until 1869. The Artists’ Artel rented premises on Vasilyevsky Island in St Petersburg where its members both lived and worked. There was a large common room and separate rooms as studios. The painters took commissions for portraits and other kinds of works and the income this brought in was divided between all the members. Business was good and after a time the commune moved into larger premises closer to the centre, on the corner of Voznesensky Prospekt and Admiralty Square. In the summer, the painters left the city to work en plein air. Many members of the Artel headed for their native regions in the provinces, returning with landscape studies oozing freshness, little genre scenes painted from life, and, on occasion, larger finished paintings. The remainder would rent a place in a village not far from St Petersburg, some old barn which they would turn into a shared studio. Back in the city in autumn, they organised viewings and discussions of the new works as well as theoretical debates. Repin reminisced: “The comrades were outspoken in their remarks. They treated each other very strictly and seriously, without any kind of false courtesy, reticence, flattery, or spite. Each of them expressed his thinking loudly and jovially and laughed with a pure heart at the inadequacies of a painting, no matter whose it was. It was a good, jolly time, a lively one!” Like many other contemporaries, Repin had indelible memories of the Artel’s celebrated “Thursdays”, the day when they held drawing evenings. The young artists knew how to relax and enjoy themselves, but above all they knew how to work and loved to do so. “Between forty and fifty people gathered and they spent the time very agreeably. A huge table was set up across the whole hall with paper, paints, pencils, and other artistic paraphernalia. Whoever wanted chose the material that suited his taste and worked on what came into his head. In the next room someone was playing the piano and singing. Sometimes in the same place people read out serious articles about exhibitions or about art.... Serious Sandy Shore, 1879. Oil on canvas, 142.2 x 88 cm. National Art Museum of the Republic of Belarus, Minsk.

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readings and drawing of the most varied kinds were followed by a very modest, yet very jolly supper. After supper there was sometimes dancing, if there were ladies present.”

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Mountain Path, the Crimea, 1879. Oil on canvas on cardboard, 30 x 39 cm. The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

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Pine Forest. Oil on canvas, 45 x 59 cm. Irkutsk Regional Art Museum, Irkutsk.

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View near Gurzuf, 1879. Oil on canvas, 35 x 54 cm. The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg.

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The Artel managed to achieve several important and useful things. It did not go in for extensive exhibition work, although the organisers dreamt about such activity and the constitution of the Artel made it a primary objective. Members displayed their works at the Academy’s exhibitions, consistently occupying one of the most honoured places there. The Artel itself only managed to take the first steps in the organisation of its own exhibitions, namely the 1864 lottery exhibition for the benefit of Mikhail Peskov, a talented artist who had fallen seriously ill, and the show arranged in Nizhni-Novgorod in 1865, one of the first attempts to hold an exhibition in the provinces. Kramskoi’s Artel existed for less than ten years and by the end of the 1860s it had broken up. The communal form of life proved too idealistic. The principle of distributing the income from commissions equally between all was a particular failure – it did away with any individual financial incentive. Members of the Artel were united by their departure on principle from their alma mater, but they were not bound together by any firm ideological programme. The small size of the Artel and the obstacles placed in the way of those who might want to join (a large entrance fee) also conspired against its internal development. Yet for all that the Artel did introduce a breath of fresh air into the artistic life of the Russian capital, it demonstrated that an independent association of creative young people was an idea whose time had come, one which encouraged painters to concern themselves not only with aesthetic matters, but with burning social issues as well. The Artel failed, but that only served to indicate the historical necessity for independent democratically-minded art to seek out new paths of development, the need for some other, more suitable form of organisation. That form was discovered at the beginning of the 1870s. The Society for Itinerant Art Exhibitions took heed of its predecessors’ experience, both within Russia and abroad. It combined the idealistic conception of fraternity and the response to new economic demands suggested by the Salon. To a large extent, it continued the line established by the Artel, summoning its members to join the new organisation. Above all, though, the Artel and the Society are linked by the fact that both were purely artistic associations, free from constant patronage and guidance “from above”. They differed in that the Society had a definite ideological programme and actively engaged in exhibition work. The Artel was an association of St Petersburg artists; the initiative in the creation of the Society was taken by painters based in both Moscow and St Petersburg. The original idea came from Grigory Miasoyedov after his return from a period abroad on a stipend from the Academy of Arts. As early as 1863 he studied the organisation of exhibitions in Holland and Belgium. In 1867, he met Nikolai Gay in Italy and they discussed new ways of bringing art to the public. In particular, they were interested in the travelling exhibitions functioning in Britain. That same

Brook in a Forest, 1880. Oil on canvas, 204 x 138 cm. Private collection. (p. 62)

year, Miasoyedov wrote to Karl Lemokh, one of the members of the Artel, about organising “moving” exhibitions. And on each occasion when the question was raised, one of the chief considerations associated with it was the necessity for the organising body to be independent of all other organisations aimed at stimulating the arts.

Path in a Forest, 1880. Oil on canvas, 59 x 48 cm. The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg. (p. 63)

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Miasoyedov’s enthusiasm for the idea infected Vasily Perov, a figure who enjoyed great authority among his fellow artists at that time. They were joined by Alexei Savrasov and Illarion Prianishnikov. On 23rd November 1869 the pioneer group, established in Moscow, sent a letter to the St Petersburg Artel with the request that the enclosed “draft plan for a moving exhibition” be presented “at one of the... Thursday gatherings for general inspection”. This request was met. The St Petersburgers signed to indicate acceptance of the Muscovites’ proposal. Among the foundingmembers who put their names to the constitution of the Society as well, mention should be made above all of Kramskoi and Gay. In all, the constitution was initially signed by fifteen people. The first paragraph of that document set out the main aim of the Society: “The organisation, with due permission, of itinerant art exhibitions with a view to a.) providing those living in the provinces with an opportunity to acquaint themselves with Russian art and to follow its successes; b.) developing a love of art in society; c.) helping artists to dispose of their works more easily.” No less important was the fact that the management of the Society’s affairs was entrusted to its general meeting and to a board elected for one year at a time from among the members, who, in turn, had to be artists “who have not abandoned the practice of art”. This was designed to guarantee the independence from controlling institutions and official figures; a sacred principle for the founders. Deliberately or not, this placed the Society in opposition to the Academy. Justly fearing hindrance from the administration of the Academy, the artists sought to obtain the necessary official approval of the Society’s constitution “on the quiet”, by-passing the Academy channels. Miasoyedov formulated the strategy they should adopt: “It is written in the scriptures: ‘Be as wise as snakes and as meek as doves’ – that is the right plan of action in my opinion.” The strategy was successful. The constitution was approved by the Ministry of Internal Affairs on 2nd November 1870. The Society’s first concern was the organising of the exhibition which opened in St Petersburg on 29th November 1871 and functioned for a little over a month. The premises were provided by the Academy of Arts and that state of affairs continued up until 1874, when open hostility broke out between the two organisations. The exhibition was a great success, although it was very small-scale in comparison with the Academy’s own annual displays, not to mention the Parisian Salons. Only sixteen artists took part, presenting a total of 47 works. Nevertheless, the critics proclaimed the Society’s first public presentation a piece of news of the first order in the world of art. The critic Vladimir Stasov, who championed the young association from that moment on, wrote of the exhibition: “Whichever way one looks at it, it is everywhere in some way special and unprecedented: the initial concept, the goal, the amicable efforts of the artists themselves..., the astonishing assembly of superb works....” Thickets, 1881. Oil on canvas, 142 x 93 cm. The State Tretyakob Gallery, Moscow.

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The first Itinerant exhibition did indeed feature works which have subsequently become “textbook” examples of Russian art, familiar to all. They include Gay’s Peter the Great Interrogating Tsarevich

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Amidst the Spreading Vale (Among a Valley), 1883. Oil on canvas, 136.4 x 203.4 cm. Kiev National Museum of Russian Art, Kiev.

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Brook in a Birch Grove, 1883. Oil on canvas, 105 x 153 cm. The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg.

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Overgrown Pond at Forest Edge, 1883. Oil on canvas, 56 x 42 cm. The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

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Alexei at Peterhof; Hunters at Rest and several excellent portraits by Perov; Prianishnikov’s Returning Empty from the Market; A May Night and a cycle of portraits by Kramskoi; and Savrasov’s The Rooks Have Returned. The following April the exhibition moved to Moscow and was enlarged by some new works: a statue of Ivan the Terrible by Mark Antokolsky, several canvasses by Vladimir Makovsky, and other pieces. In Moscow, twenty artists were involved and the number of works displayed at the first exhibition grew to 82. The dominant genres were landscape and portraiture. The democratic character of the Itinerants’ art was obvious to everyone. The exhibition was perceived as the presentation of a programme and the edificatory nature of the tasks that they set themselves was welcomed whole-heartedly. The journal Otechestvenniye zapiski included a special review of the exhibition composed by Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin. The noted writer remarked: “From now on, works of Russian art, hitherto secluded in St Petersburg alone, within the walls of the Academy of Arts, or buried in the galleries and museums of private individuals, will become accessible to all.... Art will cease to be a secret; will cease to distinguish between the elect and the non-elect. It will summon all and acknowledge the right of all to express judgement on the great things it has achieved.” Besides St Petersburg and Moscow, the exhibition visited Kiev and the second Ukrainian city, Kharkov. The financial results showed that the money taken as entrance charges were sufficient to cover the expenses of moving, whilst the payments made into a common fund from the sale works (the constitution set a figure of five percent) created a basis for the Society to continue its activities. In St Petersburg, the first exhibition was visited by 11,555 people, in Moscow by 10,440, in Kiev by 2,831, and in Kharkov by 4,717. The struggle to find buyers for their works was an important consideration for the artists in the new economic conditions in which they found themselves. However, the movement of exhibitions around the country – the number of cities covered grew and grew (Riga, Odessa, Yaroslavl, Tambov, Kursk, Poltava, Saratov, Vilno, Kazan, Warsaw) – was aimed not so much at satisfying those material needs as at affirming the new direction in art. It was bound up with the Society’s aspirations in the fields of public enlightenment and its ideology. As a rule, the paintings on display were all bought up before an exhibition got further than St Petersburg and Moscow, often before ever it opened. That was the practice of Pavel Tretyakov, the noted collector from the Muscovite merchant class. He liked to visit artists in their studios and to acquire new works he took a liking to directly from them. Nevertheless, the idea of taking exhibitions around the country was pursued with great enthusiasm. In the early days, the members themselves accompanied the exhibitions into the provinces, hung the paintings, acted as ticket-sellers, and so on.

Aegopodium, Pargolovo (study) c. 1884. Oil on canvas, 35 x 59 cm. The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg. (pp. 70-71)

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The exhibition was the chief reason for the Society’s existence. Only those artists who participated in its activities in that field could become members of the new association. It was forbidden to take part in any other exhibitions at the same time or to present works that had previously been on display somewhere else. These were fairly harsh conditions, but at first they were particularly strictly observed and as a result every successive Itinerant exhibition became a real event, and the expression “new art” was often used in speaking about the works displayed. In his report on the first twenty-five years of the Society’s activities, Miasoyedov had this to say about the Itinerants’ work: “Its novelty lay mainly in its sincerity. It ventured to speak about that which was close and familiar to it, that alongside which it was born and grew up. It ventured to be honest or, as is customarily said, real, not to tolerate fabrications and imitations, not desiring to appear to be more than it is with the aid of others’ pedestals.” We sense in those words the inner clash, the opposition to that other, academic, brand of art which, in Saltykov-Shchedrin’s words, preferred to depict “Moses bringing forth water from the rock, Yan Usmoshvets [early Russian bogatyr], and so forth”. The 1870s and 1880s were the heyday of the Society’s activities. It acted as a magnet for all that was lively and talented in Russian art. Young men expanded its ranks: Ilya Repin, Victor Vasnetsov, Vasily Polenov, Vasily Maximov, Konstantin Savitsky, Nikolai Yaroshenko, and others. The ethical and aesthetic ideas of the classic figures in the Itinerant movement had their sources in the previous decade. Repin proudly confessed: “I am a man of the ‘60s... For me the ideals of Gogol, Belinsky, Turgenev, Tolstoy... have still not died. With all my paltry strength I strive to give visual expression to my ideas in truth. Life around me is too disturbing, gives me no peace. It cries out to be painted. Reality is too outrageous to allow one to embroider designs with a clear conscience.” Many of the Itinerants might have signed their name to Repin’s declaration. Their slogans were sincerity, truth, reality, modernity, and national authenticity. Russian artists took a profoundly partial attitude to the processes going on around them in society. In Kramskoi’s opinion, truly realistic, democratic art was critical and tendentious: “The artist as a citizen and a man, besides being an artist belonging to a certain age, invariably loves something or other and The Forest Horizons, 1884. Oil on canvas, 164 x 112.8 cm. The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow. Landscape in Polesye, 1884. Oil on canvas, 71.5 x 117.5 cm. Private collection. (pp. 74-75)

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hates something or other. Assuming that he loves what is worthy and hates what is deserving of hatred... He has, then, only to be sincere in order to be tendentious.” In the 1870s Russian art began to achieve recognition at international events. The Vienna World Exhibition of 1873 prompted the first use of the expression “Russian school” by foreign critics. The formation and organisation of the national display was the work of the Academy of Arts,

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but a number of works by present and future Itinerants – Perov, Kramskoi, Repin, Makovsky, Shishkin – were included. In later years, too, the work of Itinerants occupied a conspicuous place in the artistic sections of world exhibitions. They were the group of painters, the recorders of “national landscape, life, and morals”, which the press abroad identified as the most promising. “They will probably be the ones who form Russian art as an important and significant phenomenon. Russian painters should link their future not to the depiction of the shaven faces of Ancient Romans (as Monsieur Semiradsky has), but with the thick beards of Russian peasants. I firmly believe in Russia’s future in painting,” the French critic Duranty wrote. At the very time when members of the Society were gaining international standing through their work, their already strained relationship with the St Petersburg Academy of Arts was becoming increasingly fraught. The newly-formed association’s first exhibitions, from 1871 to 1874, were held in the halls of the Academy. The officials there evidently reckoned on being able to take the new artistic organisation under their wing. In 1874, Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich, the president of the Academy, invited five representatives of the Society (Bogoliubov, Gay, Klodt, Gun, and Kramskoi) to come and see him. At the meeting he requested their assistance in merging the Society’s exhibitions with those of the Academy with the aim of bringing together “all the artistic forces of the Empire, so that those exhibitions would give a real account of the work of artists and the successes of the Russian school”. As has already been said, the Society was consistently opposed to all moves in that direction and the Grand Duke received a polite refusal. Further attempts to establish contacts gave way to a period of open conflicts. In 1874, the Academy announced that it would no longer allow its premises to be used for the Society’s exhibitions. In 1875 it barred its pupils and stipendiaries from displaying works anywhere other than at the Academy’s exhibitions. It even nurtured the idea of organising its own travelling exhibitions, but nothing ever came of that. The situation changed again in the early 1890s, following the resignation in 1889 of the Conference Secretary Piotr Iseyev who held a special dislike for the new organisation, seeing it as a real threat to the existing order in the artistic world, and looked on Kramskoi as his personal enemy. By that time the Itinerants’ authority was indisputable. One might even say that in the 1890s the Society became somewhat “academicised” in the sense that it had aged and to a certain extent lost the spirit of boldness, decisiveness, and innovation that had marked its early days. The Academy, which by virtue of the very principle behind its existence was prepared to accept a settled tradition which had stood the test of time, became ready for a new relationship with the Society. It is interesting that this shift in attitude was sanctioned from above. Ivan Tolstoi, Iseyev’s successor, stated as early as March 1890: “The Tsar has ordered that everything be changed and everyone driven away while the Itinerants are to be called in.” Only the month before, Alexander III had visited the eighteenth Itinerant exhibition with his family and purchased paintings by Nikolai Dubovskoi, Alexander Beggrow, Alexei Bogoliubov, Karl Lemokh, Vladimir Makovsky, Apollinary Vasnetsov, and Nikolai Bondarevsky (seven works for a total price of 9,230 roubles).

Edge of the Forest, 1884. Oil on canvas, 71.5 x 57.5 cm. Picture Gallery of Armenia, Yerevan.

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Before a Thunderstorm, 1884. Oil on canvas, 110 x 150 cm. The State Russian Museum, St Petersburg.

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Pine Wood, 1885. Oil on canvas, 114 x 161 cm. The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg.

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One of the most significant results of the reform carried out in the Academy in 1893 was that Itinerants were invited to teach there. Repin, Polenov, and Bogoliubov were included in the commission formed to draft a new constitution for the Academy. Repin, Shishkin, Kuinji, and Vladimir Makovsky became professors at the reorganised Academy and headed their own studios. At the beginning of the 20th century, Makovsky even became the rector of the Academy. By that time the two bodies opposed to each other on principle, the Society for Itinerant Art Exhibitions and the Academy of Arts, ceased to be foes. They not only made their peace, but even joined forces to speak out against the nascent “modernistic” conceptions in art. The Itinerants also had to fight against “the enemy within”. For many years its internal affairs were also quite turbulent. In the early days of the Society’s existence it was quite easy to become a member and the clause in the constitution laying down conditions for acceptance was excessively vague. Any artist who had not “abandoned the practice of art” could apply to join and his candidacy was then put to the vote at a general meeting. Saltykov-Shchedrin criticised that part of the constitution, suggesting, correctly as it turned out, that it would hinder the preservation of the association’s ideological direction. In reality, some artists managed to become members whose ideas and work were very far removed from that of the true Itinerants. This applies to Fiodor Bronnikov, Nikolai Bondarevsky, Karl Gun, Konstantin Makovsky, the “Parisian Russians” – Yury Leman and Alexei Kharlamov, and a number of others. When Pavel Tretyakov inquired into the reasons for such a liberal policy, Kramskoi replied: “It’s a difficult question. To give a brief answer, I’ll say this: we are fighters; there are only a few of us, admittedly, real ones, I mean... but we don’t want to have those people that you are talking about against us.” Nevertheless, unease about preserving the creative integrity of the organisation led to the formulation of restrictions which were adopted by a meeting of the Society’s members on 21st March 1879. From that moment exhibitors (those who took part in the Society’s exhibitions but were not yet members) lost the right to submit applications to join themselves. Now they could only be suggested by one of the existing members. Each candidacy was put to the vote at a general meeting and if an artist obtained the support of two-thirds of the Itinerants, he was invited to join them. As time went on, the opposition to the expansion of the Society’s numbers took on a new, unpleasant aspect. While at first members protested against the inclusion of artists whose work was alien to the democratic ideas of the Itinerants, such objections later became more of a rejection of a new, younger generation of artists whose work represented an innovative aesthetic view of the world. There were few who proved capable of “looking ahead and not behind, to the young and not to the ageing”. While Polenov, Repin, Gay, and Vasnetsov were on the side of youth and did all they could to have them participate in exhibitions, at least with the status of exhibitors, Miasoyedov, the “first Itinerant” as contemporaries styled him, Prianishnikov, Yaroshenko, and Vladimir Makovsky adopted an uncompromising position. Even such major 80

Deciduous Forest, date unknown. Oil on canvas, 35 x 52 cm. The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

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Rain in the Oak Grove, 1891. Oil on canvas, 203 x 124 cm. The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

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figures as Mikhail Nesterov, Isaac Levitan, Valentin Serov, and Konstantin Korovin, who had already come into their own as artists in the 1890s, felt uncomfortable in the Society, sensing themselves to be “the outcasts of the Itinerant movement”. In an attempt to press their case, the exhibitors even proposed displaying their rejected works in a separate hall, in imitation of the Salon des Refusés, but the suggestion was turned down by the Society. The new constitution, approved on 30th April 1890, proclaimed the sovereignty of the elder generation of Itinerants. The constitution gave control over all the organisation’s affairs to a board made up of foundermembers who had remained in the Society since its inception. The heated atmosphere which accompanied this decision led both Repin and Victor Vasnetsov to leave the Society, the former for a time, the latter permanently. From the twenty-first Itinerant exhibition, the number of participants began to decline, and it was the most talented figures that were turning away. New artistic associations appeared which attracted forces away from the Itinerants. Most notable among them were the Moscow Society of Artists and the World of Art (Mir Iskusstva). At the beginning of the 20th century, the movement was declining in terms of strength and reputation. The great social upheavals of the new century – Revolutions, the First World War, and the Civil War – did nothing to aid the peaceful development of artistic life. Admittedly, in the difficult years when the young Soviet government was fighting for survival and an official policy towards the arts had not yet been developed, there was real creative freedom. The Bolsheviks encouraged collaboration amongst all who were willing in the cultural sphere. Two bodies were set up under the auspices of the People’s Commissar for Education: IZO, dealing with the fine arts, and a Department for Museums and the Preservation of Antiquities. As things turned out, the call was mainly answered by left-wing artists such as Kasimir Malevich, Vladimir Tatlin, and Alexander Rodchenko, who perceived their own radical statements in art as a revolution in the sphere of aesthetic culture which had become part of the political revolution that had now taken place. Those Itinerants who had not taken refuge from social upheavals in the remote provinces or emigrated abroad refused to collaborate with the new regime. They also lost their posts in the Academy of Arts, which was transformed into the “Free Artistic Workshops”. For the Society for Itinerant Art Exhibitions, this was a distinct lull. Its popularity and social status dropped sharply. Lenin had a plan for “monumental propaganda” which envisaged the destruction of statues put up to Tsars and their servants coupled with the raising of monuments to revolutionary activists and new heroes, including those in the “Artist” category. Seven names were included in that category, four of them painters – Andrei Rublev, Orest Kiprensky, Alexander Ivanov, and Mikhail Vrubel. Not a single Itinerant was included in the list, an omission made all the stranger by the

Path in a Forest, 1891. Pencil, 61 x 45 cm. The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg.

fact that Modest Mussorgsky was allocated first place in the “Composer” category, while the “Writers and Poets” included Nikolai Chernyshevsky, Nikolai Dobroliubov, Dmitry Pisarev, Gleb Uspensky, Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin, and Nikolai Nekrasov, who were all ideologically and aesthetically close to the Itinerants.

Pond in an Old Park, c. 1898. Oil on canvas, 43 x 67 cm. The State Tretyakov Gallery, St Petersburg. (pp. 86-87)

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The Society’s forty-seventh exhibition, the first after the Revolution, was held in February 1922. The catalogue included a declaration from the society proclaiming the tasks presented by the new historical moment: “We want to reflect with documentary truthfulness the everyday existence of contemporary Russia in genre painting, portraiture, and landscape and to depict all the working life of its many people with their varied appearance. Whilst remaining true to realist painting, we shall seek out those devices closest to the popular masses, so as to aid the masses through the medium of finished works of painting to recognise and remember the great historic process... We throw the door open wide to all the young forces who feel an affinity with our strivings and summon them to join the Society’s ranks so as to develop and continue the strict realist school of painting, which has had and will have a definite place among the various tendencies in contemporary painting.” In point of fact, though, the declaration contained no real reflection of the cataclysmic events of recent years. The exhibition itself raised no great enthusiasm: the Itinerants’ work was by now perceived as highly outdated in both form and content. The poet Sergei Gorodetsky suggested a change in the Izvestiya: “Our daily life, our entire Revolution still remains undepicted and given capable ideological leadership and organisation, the Itinerants – who, judging by their declaration, have keenly sensed the demands of the present age – might engage in the work Forest Glade, 1897. Oil on canvas, 81 x 109 cm. Private collection.

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that is needed. Those of them who prove the strongest might possibly even become the pioneers of a genuine revival of the Itinerant movement, not founded on Populist thinking any longer though, but on the scientific world-view of the working class.”

Gorodetsky’s prevision did not come true. The young forces in art set themselves other tasks and did not link their future with the Society. They disliked the passive documentary approach to the depiction of contemporary events to which the elder Itinerants adhered. In May 1922, young artists founded a different organisation – the Association of Artists of Revolutionary Russia (AKhRR). It set itself the aim of setting down “the great historical moment” and proclaimed the birth of a new style: “heroic realism”. Meanwhile, the Society for Itinerant Art Exhibitions was dying a natural death. The year 1923 saw its last, forty-third, exhibition, whil the AKhRR, the nearest thing to a successor to the moribund Society, was rapidly gaining in strength and assurance. The Society for Itinerant Art Exhibitions had a long and glorious history. The ideological and economic principles on which the organisation was founded proved their viability. In forming the Society Russian artists emerged as masters of their own creative destiny. Sensing themselves summoned to serve the people, they refused to serve at court, ceased to depend on the posts and awards handed down by the Imperial Academy of Arts. Whilst dreaming of creative freedom and independence, the members of the Society nevertheless regarded art as a public service. Kramskoi formulated it in this way: “Freedom from what? Only, of course, from administrative tutelage, but on the other hand an artist must learn the highest degree of obedience to and dependence on... the instincts and needs of his people and the harmonising of inner feeling and personal movement with the general movement.” For many years, the ethical spirit of the Itinerants’ work determined the main course of development in Russian art.

Edge of the Deciduous Forest (study), 1895. Oil on paper mounted on cardboard, 42 x 66 cm. The State Russian Museum, St Petersburg.

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The Life and Times of Ivan Shishkin

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Of the Landscape Painter Ivan Shishkin I van Ivanovich Shishkin is one of Russia’s most powerful and original landscape painters. The flowering of Russian realist art in the second half of the last century is closely associated with his name. There can be few artists whose work has become so widely known and popularly acclaimed, few who have inspired such genuine affection in their countrymen and women. Year after year, over several decades, his creations never failed to attract attention whenever they were exhibited. His paintings were frequently reproduced in art journals, whilst his drawings and etchings were published in their own right. In the words of one of his contemporaries, “We know no other artist who possesses such impeccable technique or who so faithfully and with such deep affection for his native land and his art portrays on canvas the Russian nature that is so dear to us. In the depiction of the Russian forest, Shishkin has no rivals.” The forest was indeed the artist’s element. There was no-one better than him at conveying the majestic beauty of a pine forest or the cool gloom of a thicket. No-one understood the structure of trees the way he did. Shishkin was nicknamed the “Titan of the Russian Forest”, a description which perfectly suited his appearance. A large, powerful, well-built man with a calm, straightforward manner, he did indeed resemble a powerful mythical figure. At the same time he could not be called antisocial or reclusive. On the contrary, he was a man profoundly interested in people, an artist whose work was permeated with an ardent affection for his homeland. “My slogan?” he wrote, “Long Live Russia (I am a Russian)!” Shishkin was born on 13th January (25th January, New Style) 1832 in Yelabuga, a small provincial town situated on the steep bank of the River Kama. The future artist spent his childhood and youth in this austere but picturesque region. A sensitive, inquisitive and gifted child, he found a true friend in his father, Ivan Vasilyevich Shishkin, a merchant of modest income who leased a mill and traded in grain. Rather than seeking large profits and wealth, the artist’s father became actively interested in archaeology, mechanics, and chemistry, and thought up plans for the improvement of his home town. He wrote a book on the history of Yelabuga, planned and implemented a local water-supply system, and published a practical guide to the construction of various types of mill. At his own expense Ivan Vasilyevich restored an old tower that stood near Yelabuga. He is also known to have taken part in the excavation of the famous Anayev barrow. It was by rights, therefore, that he was elected a member of the Moscow Archaeological Society. Shishkin senior infected his son with an interest in the past, in nature, and in books. He also encouraged the boy’s fondness for drawing which had revealed itself very early. Little Ivan could forever be found with charcoal or chalk in his hand, assiduously decorating doors and walls with imaginary designs. His father was quite adept at woodcarving and passed a taste for the

Ivan Nikolaevich Kramskoi, Portrait of the Painter Ivan Shishkin, 1880. Oil on canvas, 116 x 84 cm. The State Russian Museum, St Petersburg. (p. 90) Landscape in Polesye (detail), 1884. Oil on canvas, 71.5 x 117.5 cm. Private collection. Oaks of Peter the Great In Sestroretsk, 1886. Oil on canvas, 127 x 198 cm. National Art Museum of the Republic of Belarus, Minsk. (pp. 94-95)

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activity on to his son. The boy’s liking for wood and metal-carving was also prompted by local folk art traditions in the region, as well as by the fact that silversmithing ran in the Shishkin family. After spending several years away at school, Ivan returned to his father’s house and to his favourite pastimes. He sketched, read a great deal, and went for long walks in the picturesque countryside around Yelabuga. He looked with fascination at the vast, slumbering coniferous forests and the full-flowing river, drinking in a never-ending succession of new impressions. When the time came to think of the future, the young Shishkin could not conceive of a life without art. With his father’s blessing, he joyfully set off for the old Russian capital. In 1852, Shishkin entered the Moscow College of Painting and Sculpture. Almost at once he found himself at an exhibition featuring views of the Caucasus mountains by Lev Lagorio and seascapes by Ivan Aivazovsky; the latter including the celebrated Ninth Wave. For a young man setting out to become an artist the show was a true revelation and undoubtedly it strengthened Shishkin’s interest in the landscape genre. At that time, a realistic tendency was clearly forming in the creative arts, and most strongly in literature. The written works of Pushkin, Gogol, Alexei Koltsov, and the early Nikolai Nekrasov, as well as the paintings of Alexei Venetsianov, Pavel Fedotov, and Silvester Shchedrin had a strong, positive influence on the development of realism in the fine arts. New trends were quick to penetrate into the Moscow College since it was a more democratic institution than the Academy of Arts in St Petersburg, with many serfs among its students. The young artists were not so bound by strict academic demands; there were great opportunities for them to develop their individual inclinations and independent work was encouraged in all possible ways. Instruction was largely based on Alexei Venetsianov’s progressive teaching method, which laid emphasis on the intensive study of nature. Vasily Tropinin’s precepts of greater simplicity and naturalism in art were further guidelines. The fundamentally realistic work of these two truly national artists accorded with the prevailing mood among the young. Shishkin, at that time a quiet, retiring youth wrapped up in his work, found himself in the portrait-painting class of Professor Apollon Mokritsky, a passionate follower of Karl Briullov. Mokritsky also had a due respect for Venetsianov, under whom he himself had studied in his youth when he had been keen on landscape. Now, determining Shishkin’s capabilities and sensing his great talent, Mokritsky was able to set his pupil on the right path, encouraging his interest in nature and his taste for the landscape genre, and developing his powers of observation. Later Shishkin would recall with gratitude his first mentor under whose guidance he produced a large number of studies of plants from nature. These studies represented the beginning of painstaking “laboratory” work which continued uninterrupted for the rest of his life. Shishkin made many drawings from nature in and around Moscow, as well as copying Western European masters, among whom he was especially fond of Jacob van Ruisdael. From his first years at the college, the young artist was troubled by one question: if it was possible to so vividly depict the Italian countryside, to which even such innovative landscape 96

Oak Trees, 1886. Oil on canvas, 37 x 62 cm. The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow. The Sunlit Pines, 1886. Oil on canvas, 70.2 x 102 cm. The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow. (p. 98) Oak Trees, 1887. Oil on canvas, 147 x 108 cm. The State Russian Museum, St Petersburg. (p. 99)

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painters as Silvester Shchedrin and Mikhail Lebedev had devoted themselves, could not the same kind of success be achieved when treating Russian motifs? And soon the whole college knew that Shishkin “is drawing views and landscapes the like of which no-one has drawn before – simply a field, a forest, a river, and they turn out just as beautiful as views of Switzerland”, as the artist’s own niece put it. Working alongside Shishkin were his friends, Vasily Perov, Konstantin Makovsky, and Grigory Sedov, fellow-seekers after truth in art. After graduating from the Moscow college in 1856, Shishkin entered the St Petersburg Academy of Arts. There too, he met fellow students who were attuned to democratic ideals and aware of contemporary problems. The country at this time witnessed the spreading of the emancipation movement, the growth of critical thought, and an increased awareness of the need for decisive changes in political and economic spheres, in culture and art. The principles of materialist aesthetics, expounded by the leaders of the revolutionary democrats, Nikolai Chernyshevsky and Nikolai Dobroliubov, were of special importance in this ideological struggle. For them, art was more than a mirror of the surrounding world; it was a means of transforming it. Realism and love for the people became the basic tenets of democratic aesthetics in literature, something clearly reflected in the works of Turgenev, Saltykov-Shchedrin, Ostrovsky, and many others. Shishkin’s own outlook was shaped by these innovative ideas which he was subsequently able to translate into his work. A tendency towards realism can be seen even in Shishkin’s earliest paintings inspired by the majestic and severe scenery of Valaam Island. Alongside a certain degree of conventional Sands, 1887. Oil on canvas, 122 x 201 cm. Private collection.

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idealisation and a somewhat decorative use of colour, show a painstaking attention to detail and that close scrutiny of nature which distinguishes his later works. Shishkin’s greatest teacher was always nature itself. In studies such as Stones in the Forest. Valaam Island (1859 or 1860),

he lovingly presented ancient moss-covered boulders, the leaves of ferns, and delicate blades of grass with a mastery surprising in a beginner. An important aspect of the teaching methods at the Academy was the emulation of Western European artists through the copying of their works. An especial favourite in this regard was the Swiss landscape artist Alexandre Calame, who was exceptionally popular at the time. In his graduation year, Shishkin even worried that his own lithographic manner was too similar to Calame’s. However, a comparison of the two artists’ work in this technique reveals the young Russian striving to go his own way. Shishkin was a born draughtsman, leaning towards an overtly linear form of expression. He was hardly ever parted from his pencil – constantly sketching nature in which everything fascinated him, be it an old stump, a fallen log, or a dry, wizened tree. From the outset, drawing became for him the most important means of studying the world. His graphic work is not only the largest part of his legacy, but also, it would appear, one of which he was particularly fond. In 1857, Shishkin was awarded one of the Academy’s highest prizes: the Silver Medal in drawing. His works in that field revealed such craftsmanship that the board of the Academy decreed that they should be used as guides for Other Students. The following year, his drawings created an even greater stir with their exceptional precision of line and splendid detail. At that time, the artist also tried his hand at etching and lithography. In 1860, Shishkin graduated from the Academy with its highest award, the Great Gold Medal, and a three-year scholarship to study abroad. But he was in no hurry to visit foreign parts. Drawn by the landscape of his native region, the artist travelled to Yelabuga, filling a sketchbook-journal with numerous jottings drawn straight from nature, and finally left the country only

Water-Meadows, 1884. Charcoal and chalk on tinted paper, 46.5 x 62 cm. The State Russian Museum, St Petersburg. Oak-Wood, 1887. Oil on canvas, 125 x 193 cm. Private collection. (pp. 102-103)

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in April 1862. By that time important events were brewing at the Academy of Arts. The struggle between innovative artistic forces and academicism was coming to a head. In 1863, a group of final-year students demonstratively left the Academy in protest of outdated principles and demands. This occurrence became famous as the “Revolt of the Fourteen”: a bold and seriously considered step led by Ivan Kramskoi – a convinced supporter of democratic views and one of the most consistent proponents of realism. That same year, the “Fourteen” created the St Petersburg Artists’ Artel (Guild) which became the focus for realistic art in the Russian capital. Even when abroad, Shishkin was consumed with thoughts of Russia. The letters from friends informing him of events at home strengthened his desire to return, and at the same time he was dissatisfied with the work he did in Germany and Switzerland. Traces of the Academic school were clearly visible in the landscapes of this period, animated by peasant figures and grazing herds in a superficially Romantic manner. They also betrayed the influence of the Düsseldorf landscape artists. When Shishkin returned to Russia in 1865, he was already famous. The public was impressed by his masterly pen drawings with their filigree-like detail. Two of his drawings had been bought by the Düsseldorf Museum of Art, whilst the oil painting View in the Vicinity of Düsseldorf (1865) brought the artist the title of Academician. Shishkin’s return to his homeland seems to have infused him with a new energy. He grew close to the members of the Artel who formed a focal point for a whole group of forward-looking creative spirits, whose gatherings often turned into lively discussions on the role of art, the rights and duties of the artist, new works of literature, and articles in the press. A lively, sociable man and inexhaustible raconteur, Shishkin always drew in his fellow artists. Ilya Repin, who attended the gatherings of the Artel, gave a vivid word-picture of him: “Ivan Shishkin’s voice rang out louder than any: like some mighty green forest, he impressed everyone with his healthy, hearty appetite and forthright Russian way of expressing himself. He produced quite a number of his splendid pen drawings at those evenings. The onlookers would gasp behind his back when his huge drayman’s hands and rough, work-calloused fingers began to twist and scrub away, then the drawing by some miracle or magic emerged from its creator’s coarse treatment quite exquisite and brilliant.” Shishkin’s fundamental goal was to reproduce the countryside of his native land without prettification, to tell about it clearly and truthfully. The works he created in the late 1860s marked a new stage in his artistic development. In his striving to achieve a perfect likeness of nature, Shishkin at first laboriously copied every detail of what he saw, as if afraid to omit something. For example, Felling Timber (1867) is executed in a rather dry manner, and so scrupulously detailed that the unity of the scene is lost. Nonetheless, this painting marks the first important step towards the Russian realist landscape. 104

Windfall, 1888. Oil on canvas, 139 x 211 cm. Private collection.

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Near Finland Gulf Coast, 1888. Oil on paper on cardboard, 34 x 57 cm. The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg.

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Mixed Forest, 1888. Oil on canvas, 83 x 101 cm. The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg.

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Near Finland Gulf Coast, 1888. Oil on paper on cardboard, 29 x 33 cm. The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg.

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The novelty of the theme, the exact reproduction of nature in all her diversity, the fact that it is a genre painting – all these features clearly set it apart from academic landscapes. In the 1860s, Shishkin finally broke away from the academic style of landscape painting, with its forced sublimity and its characteristic remoteness from human thought or feeling. His work acquired clear democratic overtones. His finest painting of this period, Midday in the Environs of Moscow (1869), is especially significant, as it expresses the artist’s deep love for his native land and his profound sympathy for the Russian peasantry. The worth of this painting with its light palette and mood of joyful reconciliation lies not only in the superb sense of space it conveys, but above all in the fact that Shishkin created a landscape that is truly Russian in character, in its expansive song-like quality. In its magnificent merging of terrestrial spaces and the soaring, radiant sky one can sense elements of an epic conception of the image. Shishkin believed that beauty lay in life itself, in nature as perceived and loved by the common people. The beautiful, in his opinion, is that which inspires noble feelings. In 1870, Shishkin was one of the founder members of the Society for Circulating Art Exhibitions (Peredvizhniki). This union of painters of the realist school included the best artists in the country – Repin, Surikov, Kramskoi, Vasnetsov, Savitsky, and many others whose work in the 1870s and 1880s marked the spread of Russian critical realism. The Society was a group of talented artists, whose high ideals, fervent quest for truth, and bold innovations undoubtedly influenced Shishkin’s creative development. He remained one of its most active and loyal members for the rest of his life. The Society’s second exhibition included Pine Forest (1872), a picture which initiated a new stage in Shishkin’s career. The artist succeeded in creating an image of the mighty and majestic Russian forest. The impression of profound peace is not disrupted either by the bears near the tree containing a bee-hive or the flying bird. The trunks of the old pines are splendidly painted: each has its own “face”, yet altogether this is the integral world of nature, full of the inexhaustible life-force. The painting was a success and represented Shishkin’s attainment of artistic maturity. Shishkin was one of the first to make the public sense the falseness of the pseudo-Romantic academic landscape with real conviction and to preach maximum truthfulness in the depiction of nature. His creations were a step on the path to understanding and reflecting the world around us and, as Kramskoi aptly put it, represented a “living school” of how to work from nature. The 1870s were an important period in the history of Russian landscape painting. The decade produced such masterpieces as Alexei Savrasov’s The Rooks Have Returned and Country Road; Fyodor Vasilyev’s The Thaw and Mountains of Crimea; and Arkhip Kuinji’s Evening in the Ukraine Night. Shishkin, however, retains a special place among these famous landscape artists of the realist school. It was he who created the epic realist painting; in his best canvasses, which glorify the power and beauty of nature, this epic sweep is clearly felt. 109

Bark on Dried Out Tree (study), 1889-1890. Oil on cardboard, 26 x 18 cm. The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

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Fir Forest (study), 1889-1890. Oil on canvas, 55 x 40 cm. The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

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After 1870, the majority of Shishkin’s paintings were devoted to coniferous forests (In the Thick of the Forest, 1872; The Fir Forest, 1873; Black Forest, 1876; and others). The artist constructed his pictures with painstaking attention to the foreground, so as to give the viewer the impression of being led into the forest. By concentrating on the features most characteristic of the scene, Shishkin achieves a sense of unity and enhances the emotional effect of the landscape. In the 1870s, the artist strove to achieve a generalisation of form and unity of colour. Kramskoi once remarked that Pine Forest was “more of a drawing than a painting”. However, a few months later, he wrote to their fellow-artist Vasilyev: “Shishkin has finally learned how to paint. Judge for yourself: he paints the same scene until he’s blue in the face – continually searching for just the right tone. He never did that before. At one time, he would paint, finish it off, and that was it. Not anymore. Twenty times over, he tries one colour, then another. He seems to have woken up...” Friendship with Kramskoi, the ideological leader of the Society, a theoretician and incisive artcritic, played a special role in Shishkin’s artistic development. No other person so vigilantly spotted his mistakes and helped him to overcome them. The two often stayed together at a dacha. Shishkin would immediately hurry into the forest, making his way along overgrown paths in search of the most interesting motif before setting his easel up in some thicket and tirelessly painting two or three studies a day. Shishkin attached enormous importance to this work. For him, studies were an integral part of a creative process that was based on continual observation and reflection. He had a great regard for drawing as well and nearly always had a pencil on him with which he made not only jottings, but more elaborate sketches. Delighted with the keen observation and assurance with which Shishkin painted his studies, Kramskoi remarked: “When he is face to face with nature... he is definitely in his element: he is bold and deft, not losing himself in thought.” Shishkin, as Kramskoi also noted, was a fine teacher. His talent in this sphere revealed itself back in the late 1860s when he gave lessons to Fyodor Vasilyev. Constantly surrounded by young artists, he helped them to master professional skills without suppressing their creative individuality. He was able to rejoice in their successes, whilst giving them the benefit of his own creative experience. Above all, Shishkin demanded “precision in the rendering of nature”, but at the same time, he taught his students to seek out the typical, to strive for a high level of perfection. Shishkin remained first and foremost a painter. The picture was the form in which he was best able to convey his ideas. Above one of his pencil sketches completed in the 1890s, we find the words: “Free air, open spaces, field and forest, rye and plenty. The wealth of Russia.” These are the underlying themes of one of his most important canvasses: Rye (1878). The abundance of detail does not detract from the unity of the picture, which is the result not only of the carefully thought-out composition, but also of the harmonious use of light colours, expressing a mood of joyful elation, and a comparatively uninhibited style. There is indeed a sense of abundance, of the spaciousness of Russia, of the fruitfulness of peasant labour. 112

Marsh in Polesye, 1890. Oil on canvas, 90 x 142 cm. Private collection.

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Morning in a Pine Wood, 1889. Oil on canvas, 139 x 213 cm. The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

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Shishkin reached the height of his career in the 1880s and 1890s. Such paintings as Dense Forest (1881), Pine Forest (1885), and Windfall (1888) are close in style to works of the preceding decade; however, their themes are treated with greater artistic freedom. The artist’s finest works were distinguished by a profound tendency to create “types” and an epic sweep. In the 1880s, Shishkin worked enthusiastically on landscapes which portray the vastness of Russia. One of his finest works, “Amidst the Spreading Vale” (1883), is constructed on the contrast between the boundless plain and a solitary oak which reigns over it. The subtle play of light and shade lends lyricism and vitality to the scene portrayed. Alternating bands of light and shade increase the feeling of spaciousness and create a dynamic force within the painting. New tendencies were also reflected in Shishkin’s graphic work. He considered drawing to be an important branch of art and most of his large-scale drawings are actually independent works, in no way inferior to his paintings. Of special interest are the line drawings he made with black lead in a light, free style. Shishkin used various devices to help bring out what he termed “the music of the pencil”. The lines in his drawings of the 1880s are elastic and mobile, at times flowing, at times resilient and strong or light and wavy. The pencil strokes are more animated and varied. In his best drawings, Shishkin used pencil, charcoal, chalks, and white, which allowed him to achieve softer, more attractive effects and a finer gradation of tone. These drawings are striking examples of the expressive and laconic use of artistic language. One such example is The Seashore at Meri-Hovi (1889). It was in his drawings that Shishkin first attempted to transmit a feeling of light and air. In the 1870s this concern did not arise in his painting at all. Later, however, when he began to paint more open landscapes, where greater importance attached to a light-filled sky, he had to solve the problems of plein air. The large study known as The Sunlit Pines (1886) marked a new stage in the artist’s work. He used coloured shadows and reflexes; the scene appears to be saturated in sunlight, which gives it a particularly lyrical mood. Other landscapes also reveal a successful resolution of the problem: in the painting The Oaks (1887), the patterned leaves of the trees gleam in the sun, or are plunged into semi-darkness; light, transparent shadows play on the trees and in the bright glade. The well-known Morning in a Pine Wood (pp. 114-115) captures that moment when the first light of dawn is breaking through, and the night mist is lifting. The forest seems to be awakening from its sleep. The soft, fading outlines of the trees in the background, the carefully detailed foreground, the drifting rays of the sun and the ethereal mist, create a poetic picture

Chapel in the Forest, 1890. Oil on canvas, 59 x 50 cm. Museum of Pskov Archeological Society, Pskov.

of early morning. The picture Rain in the Oak Grove (1891) provides a complete contrast. The painting is imbued with fine shades of silver and green. The dark tree trunks stand out against the light background,

Winter, 1890. Oil on canvas, 126 x 204 cm. The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg. (pp. 118-119)

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where the trees are shrouded in rain. Here we see Shishkin at his most lyrical. Shishkin’s paintings, even in the last decade of his life, were technically excellent. His later landscapes reveal a greater preoccupation with light and a more profound and lyrical perception of nature. This can be seen in the study The Forest of Countess Mordvinova (1891). Two exhibitions of Shishkin’s work were arranged in the 1890s. At the exhibition of 1891, more than five hundred studies were displayed, showing the path of the artist’s development. The paintings of the exhibition of 1893 bore witness to the exceptionally keen eye and high degree of craftsmanship of the 60-year-old artist, to the variety of his themes and techniques. An interesting painting, “In the Northern wild” (1891), is an original artistic interpretation of Lermontov’s poem of the same name. Based on contrast and making effective use of light, this painting is totally unlike Shishkin’s other works. There is a certain grandeur in the artist’s depiction of the fairy-tale beauty of a frosty northern night and a magnificent tree blanketed in silvery snow. Shishkin’s great capacity for work is also evident in his graphic creations. When the fourth album of his etchings appeared in 1895, it caused a great stir throughout the country. The sixty drawings contained in the album are examples of the best work he created during the last twenty years of his life. By bold experiment and the use of ever more complex technical devices, Shishkin constantly Oak Grove on a Grey Day, 1873. Oil on canvas, 34 x 57 cm. The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

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perfected his etchings and achieved exceptional results. Such masterpieces as Ferns and A Field (both 1886) are remarkable for the significance of each line, each feature, for the subtle gradations of light and shade, the beauty of the scene portrayed.

The prominent theatrical innovator Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko wrote in 1895: “There is no other contemporary artist about whom one wants to say so much, and that from the heart, as Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin, and there can scarcely be another among his fellows endowed with equal talent, who presents such an integral, complete appearance, such a distinctive figure as this true ‘poet of nature’.” The Pine Grove (1898), painted three years later, represents the peak of an artistic career that lasted nearly half a century. It is almost classical in its perfection, in the completeness of the artistic concept, in its monumental proportions. The painting is based on studies completed in the magnificent forests near Yelabuga, where the artist found his ideal – the synthesis of harmony and grandeur. The tall, slender pines stand out in all their supple beauty. The painting is a fine example of Shishkin’s ability to concentrate on the main features of a landscape, while at the same time portraying the many details which contribute to the variety of forest life. It is distinguished by precise drawing, a severe simplicity of the composition and a harmonious use of colour. We can detect the sure, skilled hand of the master. Shishkin’s influence on Russian art did not diminish even in the last decade of his life, when such talented landscape artists as Levitan, Serov, and Korovin entered the scene. Shishkin has left us an enormous legacy – brilliant landscapes, drawings, and etchings. Death came to the artist unexpectedly. Shishkin died on 8th March (20th March, N.S.) 1898, whilst at work on the painting Forest Kingdom. Shishkin will remain in the history of Russian landscape painting as a wise, truthful, and profound interpreter of nature.

Rotten Wood, Covered with Moss (study), 1890. Oil on canvas, 21.7 x 33.3 cm. The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

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The Forest and the Steppe and Selected Poems

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Excerpt from Annals of a Sportsman by Ivan Turgenev I t is very possible that the reader is tired of my stories. Let him be reassured. I will end with the pages that he is about to read; but before taking leave of him, I cannot help adding a few more remarks on shooting. Shooting has a singular attraction of itself – für sich [for themselves], as they used to say at the time when the philosophy of Hegel was in vogue. But supposing shooting is not to your taste, you nonetheless like nature, and it is consequently impossible for you not to envy us sportsmen. Listen. Do you know, for example, the pleasure one feels in starting out before sunrise on a fine day in spring? You descend the steps. The sky is of a sombre grey; a few stars twinkle here and there; a moist breeze stirs, and comes running up like a light wave. You hear the low confused murmur of the night, the trees rustle softly in the darkness. A rug is spread over the téléga [a fourwheeled cart used in Russia], and a box containing a samovar is placed under your feet. The horses shake, snort, and paw at the ground gracefully. A pair of white geese have just crossed the road slowly and silently. In the garden behind the hedge the watchman is peacefully snoring. In the midst of the cool atmosphere, the slightest sound remains as it were for a long time: motionless and suspended. Then you take your seat. The horses start, and the téléga rolls noisily on. You proceed: you pass the church; you go down the hill, and turn to the right along the causeway. The pond is just beginning to be covered in mist. You feel a little cold, and cover your face with the collar of your cloak. Sleep steels upon you. The horses splash noisily through the puddles of water, and the coachman whistles on his seat. You have already gone four or five verstes [an ancient measure of length used in Russia, one being approximately 1066.8 metres]. The heavens begin to redden near the horizon. The crows in the trees wake up and fly heavily about. The sparrows twitter about the haycocks. The darkness fades away, the road is more distinct; the sky lightens up; the clouds grow white; the fields are greener. In the isba [a Russian long hut] is seen the red flame of the loutchnia [a pine-knot used as a light]. Sleepy voices are heard in the farmyards. Day breaks little by little; already a few streaks of gold cross the sky, and the mist gathers in the ravines. The song of the lark is heard; the morning breeze, the herald of the day, springs up, and the red disc of the sun slowly appears. Light spreads like a torrent, and the heart flutters like a bird. Everything breathes freshness and joy! You cast your eyes about you. Yonder, behind the woods, a village appears; farther you discover another with a white church; still farther on a little wood of birch stands on the top of a hill; beyond this wood extends the marsh towards which you are going. Come, my good horses, quick! – a good trot; you have only three little verstes [3200 metres] more to go. The sun rises rapidly; the sky is clear; the day will be fine. A herd wanders slowly out from a village and comes towards you. You hasten to ascend the hill. What a magnificent view! A river, which winds serpent-like through an expanse of country of at least ten verstes [10,668 metres], shows blue through the mist. Green fields line its course; farther on are hillocks, and in the distance lapwings wheel around over a marsh, uttering their cries. The sight shoots like an arrow through the luminous ether spread through the air, and distinctly discovers the farthest objects. How freely one breathes!

In the North Wild, 1891. Oil on canvas, 161 x 118 cm. Private collection. (p. 122) Rain in the Oak Grove (detail), 1891. Oil on canvas, 203 x 124 cm. The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow. Woodland Cemetery, 1893. Oil on canvas, 104 x 117 cm. Private collection. (pp. 126-127)

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How supple the joints are! How well and full of vigour does man feel when recreated by the fresh breath of spring! But nothing can equal a fine morning in July! The sportsman alone can appreciate the happiness that comes from wandering about in the thickets at the dawn of day. The print of your foot shows in green upon the turf whitened by dew. You push aside the damp foliage of the bushes and feel inundated by the balmy warmth of the night imprisoned there. The air is impregnated with the fresh bitterness of the wormwood and the honeyed fragrance of buckwheat and clover. In the distance, a grove of oaks rises like a wall lighted up by the red rays of the morning sun. It is still cool, but there is already a foretaste of the heat of the midday. The air is so balmy that you feel a sort of giddiness. The underbrush is interminable. In the distance can be seen only a few fields of ripening rye, and strips of reddish buckwheat. The sound of a téléga is heard. It is a peasant coming along at the foot-pace, and picking out in advance for his horse a shady spot. You exchange a “good-day” with him, and scarcely have you passed him when the metallic sound of the scythe that he is sharpening strikes upon your ear. The sun mounts steadily upwards, the grass dries rapidly, and already the heat begins to be felt. One hour – two hours pass. The sky is darker at the horizon; the air is motionless and glowing. “Brother, where can one drink?” you ask of a mower. “Yonder in the ravine there’s a spring.” You push through a thick undergrowth of hazel, interlaced with creepers, and reach the bottom of the ravine. The peasant has not deceived you: a spring is hidden at the bottom of the ravine. A clump of oaks spread their leafy branches eagerly over the water; large, silvery bubbles detach themselves from the fine velvet-like moss that carpets its bottom and swing slowly to the surface. You lie yourself down on the bank; your thirst is quenched; but a feeling of laziness steals over you, and you remain motionless. The shade that surrounds you on all sides is impregnated with a fragrant freshness. You inhale with delight, and the bushes that cover the side of the ravine before you seem to grow yellow under the burning rays of the sun. But what is that? A sudden wind passes over the country; the air seems to tremble. Can it be thunder? You leave the ravine. The heaven becomes lead-coloured at the horizon. Is it heat that makes the air heavy, or is there indeed a storm brewing? There! – there is a flash in the distance; it is a storm. The sun is still overpowering; it is impossible to shoot yet. But the cloud grows larger whilst you gaze at it. It stretches out in front and advances overhead like a vault. The grass, the bushes, everything, grows suddenly dim. Quick! Is not that a shed yonder? You run to it – you enter. What torrents! What flashes! The thatched roof lets the rain through here and there, and it moistens the fragrant hay. But the sun comes out again, the storm passes over, and you leave the barn. Ah! how gaily everything sparkles about you! How fresh and clear the air is! How soft is the fragrance of the strawberries and the mushrooms! Now the day is failing. The evening twilight illumines half the heaven like a vast configuration. The sun goes down. About you the air seems as transparent as crystal; but in the distance you 128

Indian Summer, 1888. Oil on canvas, 78 x 24 cm. Private collection.

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Autumn, 1892. Oil on canvas, 82 x 108 cm. Picture Gallery of Armenia, Yerevan.

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Mill in the Forest. Preobrazhenskoe, 1897. Oil on canvas, 95 x 136 cm. Art Gallery of Uzbekistan, Tashkent.

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Grasses, 1892. Oil on canvas, 39.6 x 24.7 cm. The State Russian Museum, St Petersburg.

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see mists softly descending that seem still to be warm. The dew falls. The plains that a few hours ago were inundated with the golden waves of light assume a rosy hue. The trees, the bushes, and the tall haystacks cast shadows that grow longer and longer. The sun has disappeared. A single star comes out, and trembles in the middle of the sea of flame that fires the western sky. But this fiery ocean begins to pale. The sky grows blue; the shadows blend; and night is here. It is time to seek your resting place – the village, the isba where you intend to sleep. Gun upon your shoulder, you walk rapidly, even though overcome with fatigue. But darkness increases rapidly; you cannot see more than twenty paces ahead; even the white dogs are scarcely to be distinguished in the midst of the darkness. Above a mass of black bushes, the colour of the heavens becomes a little less obscure. Can it be a fire? No, it is the rising moon. But soon to your right you discover the lights of a village. Here is your isba, and you see through the window a table covered with a cloth, and a light: it is the supper awaiting you. Another day you have a light drochki [similar to a téléga] harnessed, and you go into the woods to shoot wood-hens. How pleasant it is to enter upon a narrow path that is bordered on each side by walls of full-grown rye! The ears strike you softly in the face. The bluets stick to your feet. Quails whistle about you, and the horse trots peacefully along. Here is the wood, with its shade and its silence. The tops of the tall aspens murmur above your head. The long weeping branches of the birches scarcely sway; the stately oak stands up like a vigorous athlete beside the graceful linden. You follow a path enamelled with shadows and verdure; large yellow flies balance themselves motionlessly in the air, and suddenly disappear; gnats hover about in swarms that seem light in the shade and dark in the sun; the birds sing peacefully. How well the silvery voice of the warbler with its joyous and innocent twitter blends with the fragrance of the lily of the valley! Come! push on into the woods; the brake grows thicker; an indefinable feeling of calmness steals over your whole being. A light breath of wind stirs the tree-tops, and the sound recalls unmistakably the sound of a waterfall. Slender plants grow here and there upon the bed of withered leaves that fell last year; mushrooms with their little caps spring up by themselves. A hare suddenly starts at some distance from you; the dogs with their sonorous voices rush after it. And how beautiful are these woods towards the end of autumn when the woodcock come! The woodcock never stays in the thicket: he must be sought at the edge of the woods. There is no wind, nor is there any sun, nor shadow, nor motion, nor even noise. A wine-like fragrance, peculiar to autumn, spreads over the country. A transparent mist hangs motionlessly over the fields that grow yellow in the distance. The trees are outlined against a pale sky of milky white; a few golden leaves still hang there upon the bare branches of the linden. The moist earth seems elastic under foot. The tall withered plants do not stir, and long webs sparkle on the dried grass. You breathe freely, but you are strangely agitated. Whilst you keep along the edge of the wood, with your eyes fixed upon your dog, the memory of those you love, living and dead, comes to you. Impressions long since forgotten suddenly revive. The imagination hovers and sails like a bird, and you believe you see all the images it calls up. Your heart suddenly begins to beat rapidly, and you project yourself passionately into the

Kama near Yelabuga, c. 1895. Oil on canvas, 106 x 177 cm. Private collection. (pp. 134-135)

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future or lose yourself in the past. All your life unrolls before your eyes. A man possesses himself completely, and seems to seize upon his whole past life, all his feelings, all the strength of his soul, and nothing in nature comes to disturb these reveries – neither sun, nor wind, nor noise, nor – And then a clear day in autumn, a little cold, when there is frost in the morning, and the silvery birches, like trees that are told about in fairy tales, are covered with golden branches; when the sun is low and its rays, though, no longer powerful, yet have greater brilliancy than in summer! A little grove of aspens, entirely despoiled of leaves and inundated with light, seems joyous in its bareness. The frost still whitens the bottom of the valley, and a fresh wind gently raises the withered leaves that cover the ground, and sweeps them before it. Long blue waves run gaily over the river, and softly rock the ducks and geese scattered over its surface. The wind brings the sound of a mill half hidden in the willows, and above it pigeons of all colours wheel rapidly about in the air. Foggy summer days also have their beauties, but sportsmen do not care for them. It is impossible to shoot on such days: a head of game rises up under your feet, and disappears almost immediately through the white motionless gloom caused by the fog. But how quiet and silent is everything about you! Everything is awake, and yet everything is silent. You pass a tree, not a leaf stirs; it seem to enjoy its rest with delight. A black line appears through the mist that covers everything; it looks like a curtain of woods; you draw near, and the woods change into a border of wormwood separating the two fields. Above you, about you, the fog is everywhere. But you feel a slight puff of wind: a bit of sky, of a pale blue, appears indistinctly through the rarefied mist; the mist begins to move, and seems to float like smoke. A brilliant ray of sun breaks through, spreads over the fields, touches the woods; then everything is again obscured. This happens again and again; but how calm and fine is the weather when the light, having finally triumphed in this struggle, and the last waves of heated fog blend together and cover the earth as if with a cloth, and unrolls and fades away in the bright depths of a blue sky! Now you are on your way to a distant part of the steppe. You follow the crossroads for ten verstes; you come to the highway. You pass long convoys of carts; you leave behind you the inns with the samovar smoking on their porches, and with their gates wide open allowing you to see the yards, in which there is always a well; villages and large green hemp-fields succeed each other; you go in this way for a long, long time. Magpies flutter on the willows that line the road; peasant women with long rakes pass over the fields; a pedestrian in an old nankeen kaftan, a knapsack on his back, walks along wearily; the heavy carriage of a noble, drawn by six lean, foundered horses, comes slowly towards us; it passes, and you see the corner of a cushion peeping out of the window, and behind, on a bag hemmed in by matting and tied with cords, clings a lackey in surtout [man’s overcoat resembling a frock] and covered with mud to his eyes. Here is the town of the district, with its little wooden houses tottering on their foundations, and its endless hedges, its merchants’ houses built of brick and inhabited, 136

Oaks in Old Peterhof, 1891. Oil on canvas, 70 x 105 cm. Russian Academy of Arts, St Petersburg. The Pine Grove, 1898. Oil on canvas, 165 x 252 cm. The State Russian Museum, St Petersburg. (pp. 138-139)

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its old bridge thrown over a deep ravine. On! on! The steppe begins. What a view is revealed from the top of this mountain! In the middle of the plain, little flat hillocks, ploughed and sown from top to bottom, are like unto enormous waves rolling up on themselves; ravines, their sides covered with bushes, are between these elevations; little groves are scattered here and there like islets, and narrow paths run from village to village; small white churches appear in the distance; a little river, lined with underbrush, winds through the middle of the plain, and here and there its course is stopped by a dam; some bustards are standing motionless in a distant field; an old manor house, with its dependencies and fruit gardens, appears to be crouching on the edge of a small pond; but you still keep on. The hills grow smaller and smaller, and the country about is almost entirely destitute of trees. At last the true steppe, immense, without end! And in winter hunting the hare over the hillocks of snow! The air that you breathe is icy cold; the brilliancy of the sparkling surface in every direction makes you blink your eyes involuntarily, and you rest them with pleasure on the blue sky above the reddish woods. And the first days of spring, when everything glitters and falls away! In the midst of the thick mist caused by the melting sun you breathe in already the fragrance of the earth that is again warm, and at the places where the oblique rays of the sun have laid bare, the larks sing cheerily, whilst the torrents, covered with foam, bound with a joyous roar from ravine to ravine. But it is time to end. I have spoken just now of the spring, and this remembrance comes at the right time: in the spring you part with less regret; in the spring those who are happy feel less attracted to distant lands. Farewell, dear readers: I wish you unutterable happiness.

Coniferous Forest, Sunny Day, 1895. Oil on canvas, 137 x 103 cm. The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg. Forest (study), 1888. Oil on canvas, 35 x 59 cm. The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg.

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Fog in the Woods, 1890s. Oil on canvas, 29 x 34 cm. Private collection, St Petersburg. Autumn, 1892. Oil on canvas, 107 x 81 cm. The State Russian Museum, St Petersburg. (p. 145)

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Give Me the Splendid, Silent Sun by Walt Whitman

144

Give me the splendid silent sun, with all his beams full-dazzling;

Keep the blossoming buckwheat fields, where the Ninth-month

Give me juicy autumnal fruit, ripe and red from the orchard;

bees hum;

Give me a field where the unmow’d grass grows;

Give me faces and streets! give me these phantoms incessant and

Give me an arbour, give me the trellis’d grape;

endless along the trottoirs!

Give me fresh corn and wheat—give me serene-moving animals,

Give me interminable eyes! give me women! give me comrades

teaching content;

and lovers

Give me nights perfectly quiet, as on high plateaus west of the

by the thousand!

Mississippi, and I looking up at the stars;

Let me see new ones every day! let me hold new ones by the hand

Give me odorous at sunrise a garden of beautiful flowers, where I can

every day!

walk undisturb’d;

Give me such shows! give me the streets of Manhattan!

Give me for marriage a sweet-breath’d woman, of whom I should

Give me Broadway, with the soldiers marching—give me the sound of

never tire;

the trumpets and drums!

Give me a perfect child—give me, away, aside from the noise of the

(The soldiers in companies or regiments—some, starting away, flush’d

world, a rural, domestic life;

and reckless;

Give me to warble spontaneous songs, reliev’d, recluse by myself, for

Some, their time up, returning, with thinn’d ranks—young, yet very

my own ears only;

old, worn, marching, noticing nothing;)

Give me solitude—give me Nature—give me again, O Nature, your

—Give me the shores and the wharves heavy-fringed with the black

primal sanities!

ships!

—These, demanding to have them, (tired with ceaseless excitement,

O such for me! O an intense life! O full to repletion, and varied!

and rack’d by the war-strife;)

The life of the theatre, bar-room, huge hotel, for me!

These to procure, incessantly asking, rising in cries from my heart,

The saloon of the steamer! the crowded excursion for me! the torch-

While yet incessantly asking, still I adhere to my city;

light procession!

Day upon day, and year upon year, O city, walking your streets,

The dense brigade, bound for the war, with high piled military wagons

Where you hold me enchain’d a certain time, refusing to give me up;

following;

Yet giving to make me glutted, enrich’d of soul—you give me forever

People, endless, streaming, with strong voices, passions, pageants;

faces;

Manhattan streets, with their powerful throbs, with the beating

(O I see what I sought to escape, confronting, reversing my cries;

drums, as now;

I see my own soul trampling down what it ask’d for.)

The endless and noisy chorus, the rustle and clank of muskets, (even

Keep your splendid, silent sun;

the sight of the wounded;)

Keep your woods, O Nature, and the quiet places by the woods;

Manhattan crowds, with their turbulent musical chorus—with varied

Keep your fields of clover and timothy, and your corn-fields

chorus, and light of the sparkling eyes;

and orchards;

Manhattan faces and eyes forever for me.

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Mordvinov’s Oaks, 1891. Oil on canvas, 84 x 111 cm. The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg.

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The Forest of Countess Mordvinova, 1891. Oil on canvas, 108 x 81 cm. The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

147

Flowers at the Edge of the Woods, date unknown. Oil on paper on cardboard, 42 x 67 cm. The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow. The Pine Grove (detail), 1898. Oil on canvas, 165 x 252 cm. The State Russian Museum, St Petersburg.(p. 150)

148

The Rain in the Pinewood by Gabriele D’Annunzio Hush. On the edge

Light,

Of the woods I do not hear

On the fresh thoughts

Words which you call

That our soul discloses-

Human; but I hear

Renewed,

Words which are newer

On the lovely fable

Spoken by droplets and leaves

That yesterday

Far away.

Beguiled you, that beguiles me today,

Listen. Rain falls

O Hermione.

From the scattered clouds. Rain falls on the tamarisks

Do you hear?

Briny and parched.

The rain is falling

Rain falls on the pine trees

On the solitary

Scaly and bristling,

Greenness

Rain falls on the myrtles-

With a crackling that persists

Divine,

And varies in the air

On the broom-shrubs gleaming

According to the foliage

With clustered flowers,

Sparser, less sparse.

On the junipers thick

Listen.

With fragrant berries,

The weeping is answered

Rain falls on our faces-

By the song

Sylvan,

Of the Cicadas

Rain falls on our hands-

Which are not frightened

Naked,

By the weeping of the South wind

On our clothes-

Or the ashen sky

Pond in an Old Park (detail), c. 1898. Oil on canvas, 43 x 67 cm. The State Tretyakov Gallery, St Petersburg. (p. 151) Walk in the Forest (detail), 1869. Oil on canvas, 34.3 x 43.3 cm. The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow. (p. 153)

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And the pine tree

Listen.

Has one sound, and the myrtle

The daughter of the air

Another sound, and the juniper

is mute; but the daughter

Yet another, instruments

Of the miry swamp, in the distance,

Different

The frog,

Under numberless fingers.

Is singing in the deepest shade,

And we are

Who knows where, who knows where!

Immersed in the spirit

And rain falls on your lashes,

Of the woodland,

Hermione.

Alive with arboreal life;

15

And your ecstatic face

Rain falls on your black eyelashes

Is soft with rain

So that you seem to weep

As a leaf

But from pleasure; not white

And your hair

But made almost green,

Is fragrant like

You seem to emerge from bark.

The bright broom-flowers,

And within us all life is fresh,

O earthly creature

Fragrant,

Whose name is

The heart in our breasts is like a peach

Hermione.

Untouched,

Listen, listen. The harmony

The eyes between the eyelids

Of the high-borne cicadas

Are like springs in the grass,

Gradually becomes

The teeth in their sockets

Fainter

Are like bitter almonds.

Beneath the weeping

And we go from thicket to thicket,

That grows stronger;

Now joined, now apart

But a song mingles with it-

(And the rough green vigour

Hoarser,

Entwines our ankles,

Rising from down there,

Entangles our knees)

From the far damp shade.

Who knows where, who knows where!

Fainter and weaker

And rain falls on our faces-

It slackens, fades away.

Sylvan,

Only one note

Rain falls on our hands-

Still trembles, fades away.

Naked,

Rises again, trembles, fades away.

On our clothes-

One hears no sea voice.

Light,

Now one hears upon all the foliage,

On the fresh thoughts

Pelting,

That our soul discloses-

The silvery rain

Renewed,

That cleanses,

On the lovely fable

The pelting that varies

That yesterday

According to the foliage

Beguiled me, that beguiles you today,

Thicker, less thick.

O Hermione.

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154

Graphic Works of Ivan Shishkin

Self-Portrait, c. 1854. Etching, 14 x 10 cm. The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg. (p. 154) By the Banks of the Kama near Yelabuga, 1885. Etching, 13.4 x 25.5 cm. The State Russian Museum, St Petersburg. On River Kama near Yelabuga, 1885. Etching, 25 x 12 cm. The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg.

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A Shed on the Riverbank, 1860s. Graphite on paper, 13.9 x 20.5 cm. The State Russian Museum, St Petersburg.

158

A letter from Shishkin to his parents with a sketch for View of Valaam Island (October 1858).

159

Deciduous Forest on Rocky Coast, Valaam, 1859. Graphite on paper, 42 x 57 cm. The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg.

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Oak on the Shore of the Gulf of Finland, 1857. Graphite on paper. The State Russian Museum, St Petersburg.

161

Thicket (View on Valaam Island), 1860. Lithograph, 21 x 27 cm. The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg. Road in a Forest, 1869. Pen and Indian ink on paper, 28.3 x 20.8 cm. The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

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Clouds over the Grove, 1878. Etching, 37 x 26 cm. The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg.

164

Pathway of a Summer Garden, 1869. Ink on paper, 54.5 x 40.1 cm. The State Russian Museum, St Petersburg.

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A Forest Brook with Steep Banks, 1885. Graphite on paper, 47.5 x 31.6 cm. The State Russian Museum, St Petersburg. Fern, 1886. Pencil, 21 x 31.5 cm. The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg.

167

Field, 1886. Etching and aquatint, 20 x 31 cm. At the Edge of a Birch Grove. Valaam, 1859-1860. Lithograph, 44.4 x 37.5 cm.

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Zelenin Grove, 1871. Graphite on paper, 29.7 x 43.3 cm. The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg. Forest, 1869. Pen and Indian ink on paper, 37.2 x 21.5 cm. The Latvian National Museum of Art, Riga.

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A Forest Stream, 1871. Graphite and white on tinted paper, 29.7 x 43.3 cm. The State Russian Museum, St Petersburg. Near Brook, 1883. Brown paper, charcoal, chalk, 59 x 45 cm. The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg.

17

173

Sawed-Off Tree, 1870s. Graphite on paper, 23 x 32 cm. The State Russian Museum, St Petersburg. The Taiga, 1880. Etching, 51.1 x 36.2 cm.

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Forest Flowers, 1873. Etching, 9.6 x 8 cm. Gully in a Fir Grove, 1874. Pen and Indian ink on paper, 17.4 x 51.6 cm. The State Russian Museum, St Petersburg.

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Coltsfoot, 1878. Graphite on paper, 31 x 22.3 cm. Russian Academy of Arts, St Petersburg.

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Pines, c. 1880-1889. Pencil, 63 x 40 cm. The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg.

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180

At the Summit of Ai-Petri, 1879. Graphite on paper, 47 x 30.5 cm. The State Russian Museum, St Petersburg. Glade, 1885. Etching, 22.7 x 16.1 cm.

181

In the Park, 1880s, Graphite on paper, 33.1 x 24.6 cm. The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

182

Fir in Sunlight, 1880s. Graphite on paper, 29.8 x 23.3 cm. The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

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Fields and Groves, 1880s. Graphite on paper, 235 x 32.5 cm. The State Russian Museum, St Petersburg. Forest Bog, 1889. Pen and Indian ink on paper, 85.5 x 65 cm. Kiev National Museum of Russian Art, Kiev.

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Biography and Photographic Archives

1832

Born 13th (25th New Style) January in the town of Yelabuga, Viatka Province, into a merchant family.

1852

In August, enrols at the Moscow School of Painting and Sculpture where he studies (until January 1856) under Academician Apollon Mokritsky.

1856

In January, moves to St Petersburg and enters the Academy of Arts where he studies (until September 1860) in the landscape class of Professor Sokrat Vorobyov.

Ivan Shishkin painting The Mordvinovo Oaks, 1891. Photograph. (p. 186) Ivan Shishkin, 1878. Photograph. Ivan Shishkin in Düsseldorf, 1864-1865. Photograph.

188

1858

From May to September, works on Valaam, an island in Lake Ladoga (where he will return to work in the next two summers).

1859

Receives a small gold medal for his picture A View of Valaam Island (The Valaam Gorge).

1860

Is awarded a great gold medal and the right to travel abroad at the Academy’s expense for two canvasses, both entitled View of Valaam Island. Kukko.

Ivan Shishkin (centre) amongst the members of the Society for Circulating Art Exhibitions, 1866. Photograph.

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1862

In April, takes up his first scholarship abroad; goes to Germany and visits Switzerland. He lives for a time in Prague, travels around Bohemia and, in October, settles in Munich. Visits the studios of Benno and Franz Adam and of Friedrich Volz.

1863

Works in the studio of Rudolf Roller in Zurich. Paints studies and sketches in the Bernese Oberland.

1864

Moves to Düsseldorf (where he stays until June 1965). In summer, works from nature in the Teutoburg Forest.

1865

In June, returns to Russia. Is awarded the title of Academician for his painting View in the Vicinity of Düsseldorf. Settles in St Petersburg.

1866

Joins the Moscow Society of Art Lovers.

1867

Works from nature on Valaam Island together with his pupil Fyodor Vasilyev.

Ivan Shishkin and peasants, 1890s. Photograph. Yevgeniya Shishkina, the artist’s first wife, late 1860s-early 1870s. Photograph. Darya Shishkina, the artist’s mother. Photograph.

191

1868

Marries Vasilyev’s sister Eugenia (died 1873).

1869

Paints the picture Midday in the Environs of Moscow, the first of his works acquired by Pavel Tretyakov for his gallery. His daughter Lydia is born.

1870

Becomes a founder-member of the Society for Circulating Art Exhibitions (Peredvizhniki) with which his further artistic activities are associated. (He participates in its travelling exhibitions in 1871-1898.)

Ivan Shishskin (right) amongst the Itinerants, 1870s. Photograph.

192

1871

Joins the Society of Russian Etchers.

1873

Is made a professor for the painting Backwoods.

1878

Paints the picture Rye. Contributes to the Paris World Exhibition and visits it.

1879

In summer, paints studies and sketches in the Crimea.

1880

Marries the painter Olga Lagoda (died in 1881 after the birth of their daughter Xenia).

1883

Paints the picture “Amidst the Spreading Vale”

Imperial Academy of Arts, St Petersburg, late 19th century. Photograph.

193

Group of painters from the Society of Travelling Exhibitions, 1880. Photograph: André Denier.

194

1884

Completes the canvas Woodland Vistas.

1885

Paints his famous study The Sunlit Pines.

1887

Paints the pictures Oak Grove and The Oaks.

1888

Works from nature at the resort of Schmetzk near Narva in Estonia (returns there in 1892 and 1894)

1889

Paints studies from nature at Meri-Hovi on the coast of the Gulf of Finland (returns in 1891).

1891

Appointed professor-director of the landscape class in the Academy’s Advanced Art School.

1898

Completes his painting The Pine Grove. Dies on 8th (20th N.S.) March in St Petersburg.

The city of Chuhuiv (Chuguyev). Shops on Nikitskaya Street, c. 1860. Photograph.

195

Index

Aegopodium, Pargolovo (study)

70-71

Amidst the Spreading Vale (Among a Valley)

66

Apiary in a Forest

46

Autumn

130, 145

B By the Banks of the Kama near Yelabuga

156

Bark on Dried Out Tree (study)

110

Beech Forest in Switzerland

14

Before a Thunderstorm

78

Birch and Mountain Ash (study)

47

Boulders in a Forest. Valaam (study)

8

Brook in a Birch Grove

67

Brook in a Forest

62

C Chapel in the Forest At the Church Fence. Valaam Island

116 26

The city of Chuhuiv (Chuguyev). Shops on Nikitskaya Street (Photograph)

195

Clouds over the Grove

164

Coltsfoot

178

Coniferous Forest, Sunny Day

140

The Cut Down Tree

52

D Darya Shishkina, the artist’s mother (Photograph)

191

Deciduous Forest on Rocky Coast, Valaam

160

Deciduous Forest

81

E At the Edge of a Birch Grove. Valaam Edge of the Deciduous Forest (study)

89

Edge of the Forest

76

Evening 196

169

36-37

F Fern

167

Field

168

Fields and Groves

184

Fir Forest (study)

111

Fir in Sunlight

183

Fir-Tree Forest

40

Flowers at the Edge of the Woods Fog in the Woods

148 142-143

Forest (study)

141

Forest Bog

185

A Forest Brook with Steep Banks

166

Forest Flowers

176

Forest Glade

88

The Forest Horizons

73

Forest Landscape with Herons

34

The Forest of Countess Mordvinova Forest Stream Forest

147 31, 172 171

G Glade

181

Grasses

132

Group of painters from the Society of Travelling Exhibitions (Photograph)

194

Grove Gully in a Fir Grove

44 177

H Haymaking in Oak Grove

51

Herd in the Forest

16

I/K Imperial Academy of Arts, St Petersburg (Photograph)

193

Indian Summer

129

Ivan Shishkin (Photograph)

186, 188, 189, 190, 192 197

Landscape in Polesye Landscape with a Hunter. Valaam Island A letter from Shishkin to his parents with a sketch for View of Valaam Island

74-75, 92 18 159

M Marsh in Polessie Midday. Countryside near Moscow

113 25

Mill in the Forest. Preobrazhenskoe

131

Mixed Forest

107

Mordvinov’s Oaks

146

Morning in a Pine Wood

50, 114-115

Mountain Path, the Crimea

58

Mushroom Hunting

32

N Near Brook Near Finland Gulf Coast Noon. Suburbs of Moscow. Bratsevo In the North Wild

173 106, 108 24 122

O Oak Grove on a Grey Day

120

Oak on the Shore of the Gulf of Finland

161

Oak Trees Oaks in Old Peterhof Oaks of Peter the Great In Sestroretsk Oak-Wood

97, 99 137 94-95 102-103

An Old House on the Edge of a Pond

13

Overgrown Pond at Forest Edge

68

P In the Park Path in a Forest Pathway of a Summer Garden Pine Forest

63, 84 165 59

The Pine Grove

138-139, 150

Pine Wood

42-43, 49, 79

Pines 198

182

179

Pond in an Old Park Portrait of the Painter Ivan Shishkin (Ivan Nikolaevich Kramskoi)

86-87, 151 38, 90

R Rain in the Oak Grove

82-83, 124

On River Kama near Yelabuga

157

Road in a Forest

163

Rotten Wood, Covered with Moss (study)

121

Rye

54-55

S Sands Sandy Shore Sawed-Off Tree Self-Portrait

100 57 174 6, 154

A Shed on the Riverbank

158

At the Summit of Ai-Petri

180

The Sunlit Pines

98

T The Taiga Tevtoburgsky Forest Thicket (View on Valaam Island) Thickets Tree Felling

175 23 162 65 20-21

V View in the Vicinity of Düsseldorf

15

View near Gurzuf

60

View near St Petersburg

10

View of Valaam Island. Kukko

11

W/Y/Z Walk in the Forest Water-Meadows Willows in Sunlight Windfall Winter Woman with a Boy in the Forest Woodland Cemetary

28-29, 153 101 45 105 118-119 33 126-127

Yevgeniya Shishkina, the artist’s first wife (Photograph)

191

Zelenin Grove

170 199

R

ussian countryside is some of the world’s most lovely, from the celebrated explosions of wildflowers that fill its forests in the spring, to the icy winter tundra that defeated the advances of Napoleon and Hitler, and provided the backdrop for the drama of many of Russian literature’s celebrated scenes. No-one immortalised it better than Ivan Shishkin (1832-1898), the landscape painter who captured the poetry and majesty of the Russian countryside in a non-replicable way. In this comprehensive work of scholarship, Irina Shuvalova and Victoria Charles make a thorough examination of Shishkin’s work.