Born into a poor merchant’s family in Yelabuga, Shishkin entered the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. He then continued his education at the Imperial Academy of Arts in Saint Petersburg, in the studio of Sokrat Vorobyov, a famous portrait painter. During that period of his life, Shishkin often went out of town to paint en plein air. He painted numerous studies trying to capture ever-changing landscape. Back in the workshop, he combined them into large painting.
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Ivan Shishkin
Deep forest
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Prose writer Vasily Mikheev wrote about Shishkin’s paintings and how to look at them:
… his forest paintings are very true and subtle! It takes time to look at his paintings to almost smell the trees and plants, to feel how the scent of the forest gradually intoxicates you, to see how the pine trees, fir trees, and rye growing under the canopy come alive.
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He was 23 years old when one the State Russian Museum bought one of the studies, Pine on a Rock.
I.I. Shishkin, Pine on a Rock (1855). The State Russian Museum
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Although Deep Forest is a study, art historians regard it as a finished work. The artist depicts the edge of a forest covered in young green grass and wildflowers, a deep forest in the background. The cropped treetops create a feeling of extremely tall trees, which would not even fit the canvas.
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The painter uses numerous hues of green. He applies the tonal painting technique, which is based on light and dark variations of a single colour.
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The artist carefully depicts young forest trees, blooming grasses and herbs, focusing on the smallest detail. It is clear from the painting that Shishkin was interested in real nature rather than a composed landscape. He said that painting nature can endure no falsehood. Therefore, he studied plants in their natural environment to depict them later on canvas.
The painting was Shishkin’s gift to his teacher, artist Alexei Bogolyubov. In 1885, in Saratov, Bogolyubov founded the first public art museum in Russia and named it after his grandfather, poet and writer Alexander Radishchev. He donated his collection of paintings, including this painting, to the museum.
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A. N. Radishchev Saratov State Museum of Fine Arts
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Deep forest
Creation period
1874
Dimensions
70x57 cm
Technique
oil on canvas
Collection
8
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