Ivan Shishkin painted ‘Landscape with Bridge’ in the 1890s. In this study, he depicts a small wood with an overgrown body of water. A makeshift bridge of thick tree trunks is thrown over the water. It is reinforced with branches and smaller trunks. The artist constructed the painting with warm reddish and yellow hues. Reflections of tree tops illuminated by the sun are visible in the water, pinkish clouds are running across the sky. Despite the study-like nature of the work, the painter conveyed with incredible care the lively variety of herbs and the richness of the damp air.
Contemporaries said that Ivan Shishkin felt every blade of grass, every leaf before work. It has been said more than once about his work that botanists can determine the types of plants and mosses from his landscapes. The artist, who grew up in Yelabuga, disappeared into the pine forests since childhood. While still very young, he wrote in his diary: ‘Nature is the only book from which we can learn art.’
Already in adulthood, the artist often traveled in search of beautiful views. Every autumn, returning to St. Petersburg after summer study works, the artist brought with him dozens, if not hundreds of sketches from nature. Once Ivan Kramskoy accompanied him on a trip, and later he described his impression: ‘Shishkin simply amazes us with his knowledge, he produces two or three exquisite studies a day, finishing them completely. And when he is in front of nature, then as if in his element, here he is bold and dexterous, he does not think; here he knows everything how, what and why.’
One of Shishkin’s most anecdotal trips happened in Belovezhskaya Pushcha. Emperor Alexander III almost forcibly sent him there. The ruler liked the painting “Summer Forest”, which he saw at the 20th traveling exhibition in 1892, so much that he asked for the painter to be introduced to him. When they met, the sovereign wished the artist to go to Belovezhskaya Pushcha to write “a real forest that he cannot see here.” In Belovezhskaya Pushcha, servants were assigned to the artist who tried to accompany him even during work. The local manager once asked the painter to redo a study with a withered tree — so that the Emperor would not suddenly think that the official did not look after the nature well, as it had dried up.
Ivan Shishkin became the brightest representative of the peredvizhniki movement. He created an epic image of the Russian forest. He is known as one of the founders of the national realistic landscape.
