Description of the painting “Ship Grove” by I. Shishkin. "Ship Grove", Shishkin I

“Shishkin simply amazes us with his knowledge,
he skates two or three etudes a day, and how difficult they are,
and completely ends. And when he is in front of nature...
then he’s definitely in his element, here he’s both brave and dexterous,
doesn’t think twice, here he knows everything...”

(From Kramskoy’s letter to F. Vasiliev)

Many artists were inspired by the natural beauties of Rus' - Kuindzhi, Savrasov, Levitan. Among the masters of landscape painting, the paintings of Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin occupy a special place, for whom forests and meadows were more than nature. This was his life. And that’s why his paintings are so realistic and a little mysterious. After all, Mother Nature is not ready to reveal her secrets to everyone. But the landscape painter Shishkin became one of those who comprehended her secrets.

Why is Ivan Shishkin called the singer of the Russian forest? In the artist’s gallery we see many paintings dedicated to the theme of the forest epic. This is the well-known painting “Morning in pine forest”, and one of the first paintings “Cutting Wood”, and of course epic work « Ship Grove"is the final landscape that marked the end of the work of the famous landscape painter.

You can stand in front of the “Ship Grove” canvas endlessly, and every second your eyes will find new details. This is the highlight of Ivan Shishkin’s style: he meticulously wrote out tiny elements, giving importance to every little thing. Every pebble on the bank of the stream, every blade of grass is drawn with photographic precision. I just want to sit down on a huge boulder, touch it with my palm and feel the warmth of the stone heated by the hot July sun.

The picture literally comes to life: the water in the stream runs, ringing, the light rustle of the wind sweeps through the tops of the hundred-year-old pines. Their mossy trunks seem to exude the smell of amber resin. The trunk of a birch tree, cut down by someone, lies lonely in the stream. Probably the village men had prepared brooms for the bathhouse. The rays of the sun were lost in the crowns of centuries-old trees. Only a small clearing was able to illuminate the summer sun, and the sunlight was unable to penetrate into the depths of the forest.

Sometimes it seems that in the painting “Ship Grove” Shishkin talks about the relationship between generations: old pines symbolize wisdom and experience, a fallen branch with withered needles means decrepitude, and nearby young growth blinds with greenery - short pines compete with each other to see which of them taller and slimmer. Soon they will take the place of their ancestors. Do you see how the water washes away the shore? The roots of the old pine tree were exposed. Not much time will pass, and a hurricane will knock down the mighty trunk, uprooting it from the soil weakened by water.

Ivan Shishkin lived and breathed Russian nature, identifying it with human life. That is why his paintings seem to come to life before the eyes of observers, they are so convex and relief. The artist's love for native land manifested itself in the play of colors, mastery of the brush and the theme of Russian nature, to which the epic canvases of the great landscape painter are dedicated.

Essay based on Shishkin's painting "Ship Grove"

At a small forest lake, like epic heroes, the gigantic pines, warmed by the hot sun, froze. It’s as if they are thirsty to drink the life-giving moisture on this hot day, to absorb it with their mighty roots. The branches of the pine trees flew high above the ground. The crowns of these centuries-old giants are tightly closed. It feels like the sun's rays are having difficulty breaking through the dark green needles. Dean wonders how a person could transfer this forest miracle onto canvas with the help of a brush and paints.
Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin gave the painting an amazing title: “Ship Grove.” From the name it becomes clear that these pines will one day serve man - they will be used to build ships, majestic buildings... It seems that next to the painting we breathe more freely and deeply. The canvas seems to waft at us with the resinous aroma of pine, fresh forest dampness, and the delight of coniferous litter.
You pay attention to the fence made of twigs and branches, which seems to protect dense forest from uninvited guests. One can feel the presence of a person who cares about the protection of the green giants. Who can threaten the forest? Only a man with an axe. Here is the forest lake - like an obstacle on the path of a random traveler. True, a log thrown across the surface of the water serves as a kind of signpost to the traveler. In the right corner of the picture one can discern a path that gets lost somewhere around the bend.
The sky in the picture takes up little space, but sunlight floods the entire foreground. It warms up the trunks of the pines, penetrates to the bottom of the lake and the hill behind it, caresses the young pines. I want to cross to the other side, fight in the thicket and wait for some miracle. And the miracle is the trees themselves. They are in front of us. They are open to our eyes. Shishkin wrote his masterpiece “Ship Grove” in 1898, the same year he died. The “Ship Grove” exudes majestic calm and imperturbable strength. The artist told us about eternal life native nature, about the inexhaustible power of the native land and its ageless, ever-renewing beauty.

An essay based on the painting by I. I. Shishkin “Ship Grove”.
A master of landscape and singer of his native nature, Shishkin created another masterpiece in his time - the painting “Ship Grove”. This picture touches with its purity and naivety.
The canvas depicts ancient trees, between which a shallow but quite wide river rolls into the distance. There is a small wooden bridge across the river, which is made of thin boards and remnants of wood. Stones of various sizes are scattered along the banks of the river, and to the side of the bridge you can see a ford, the edge of which is marked with a board. Most likely, people crossed the river in this place even before the bridge appeared, and perhaps it appeared quite recently. Along the banks of the river, under ancient trees, there is a carpet of slightly yellowed grass, which usually appears in mid-summer.

In order to convey the beauty of the forest, Shishkin chose very unusual colors - green, brown and yellow. Thanks to their skillful combination, it becomes clear that summer has already passed the halfway point - and is gradually, inexorably moving towards its logical conclusion.
The painting touched me to the depths of my soul with its truthfulness, which distinguishes other paintings by Shishkin. I would like to know better native nature, but, unfortunately, not every person is given this.

Shishkin "Ship Grove".
The rare popularity of Ivan Shishkin among his contemporaries and especially among subsequent generations also had its downside. Numerous copies of his paintings were usually hung in provincial station waiting rooms and canteens, reproduced on candy wrappers, and all this, of course, contributed to the artist’s wide popularity. But its true meaning in Russian art sometimes became dim and narrowed because of this.
I. Shishkin did not ennoble nature in accordance with the aesthetic requirements of academicism, and she does not need it. For an artist, nature is nobility itself; it is nature that can ennoble a person both directly and in its reproduction by art. All contemporaries and subsequent generations of art critics noted that the personality of the artist himself was dissolved in nature, delighted with it. I. Shishkin did not look into himself, did not listen to his “I”, he surveyed the world enthusiastically, in complete distraction from himself, humiliating himself before the creations of beautiful nature. Many artists, depicting nature, also showed their inner world, the voice of I. Shishkin completely coincided with the voice of nature. Main creative achievements Shishkin the artist is precisely associated with the epic image national traits Russian landscape.
The name of Ivan Shishkin is associated with the viewer’s idea of ​​a leisurely and majestic narrative about the life of a Russian forest, about the wilds of the forest, filled with the smell of resin and rotting windbreaks. His huge canvases were like a detailed story about the life of mighty ship groves, shady oak forests and expansive fields with ripe rye bending in the wind. In these stories, the artist did not miss a single detail and flawlessly depicted everything: the age of the trees, their character, the soil on which they grow, and how the roots are exposed on the edges of sandy cliffs, and how stones and boulders lie in clean waters forest stream, and how the spots of sunlight are located on the green grass-ant...
We are surrounded on all sides by heroic pines and gigantic mossy spruce trees with fancifully curving branches. Everything on the artist’s canvases was filled with numerous, lovingly painted signs of forest life: roots crawling out of the ground, huge stones-boulders, stumps overgrown with moss and honey mushrooms, bushes and broken branches, grass and ferns. All this was studied to the smallest detail, chosen and written by I. Shishkin, who spent half his life in the forest and even in appearance resembled an old forest man.
The artist’s work is an enthusiastic ode glorifying the epic beauty and power of the Russian forest. No wonder I. Kramskoy said: “Before Shishkin in Russia there were far-fetched landscapes, such as had never existed anywhere.” Even taking into account the categorical nature of such a statement, I. Kramskoy did not sin too much against historical truth. Majestic Russian nature, which served as a source poetic images in folklore and literature, indeed, for a long time was not depicted so vividly in landscape painting. And only the coloring of I. Shishkin’s landscapes was distinguished by the sophistication of the richest shades of green, the soft palette of which organically included brown spots on tree trunks. If he depicts the water surface of a pond, then it shimmers with the mother-of-pearl of the shaky reflections of trees, bushes and grasses. And nowhere does the artist fall into salonism; a sentimental perception of nature was alien to I. Shishkin. This is what allowed him to paint a truly epic masterpiece in 1898 - the painting "Ship Grove", which is considered one of the pinnacles of the artist's work.
The canvas shows a typically Russian forest landscape with a rising, mighty wall of a dense coniferous forest. Its edge is literally bathed in the rays of the blessed summer sun. Its dazzling light not only gilded the crowns of the trees, but also, igniting the quivering radiance of the glare, penetrated into the depths of the forest. The impression the viewer gets from the painting is as if in reality he is inhaling the tart smell of a sun-warmed pine forest.
The water of the ferruginous stream flowing out from behind the trees also seems to be heated to the very bottom. Every grain of sand in the exposed soil of its riverbed is permeated with light.
It seemed that there was nothing special in this picture bright colors, just as there are none in the pine forest in reality - with its monotonous coloring of the greenery of the trees and their trunks. There is no diversity of plant forms in the picture, just as this is not found in the pine forest, where only one species of tree reigns. There is still a lot missing, it would seem...
Meanwhile, the picture immediately captivates the viewer national characteristics Russian landscape - majestic in its beauty, strength and strength. The specific earthly forces of nature in I. Shishkin seem unearthly powerful, absorbing everything random, base and petty.
The first impression of the picture is majestic calm and equanimity. I. Shishkin wrote it without looking for those changeable effects - morning, rain, fog, which he had before. This canvas seems to resemble and " Pinery", but the difference between them is very significant. If the trees in the "Pine Forest" were depicted entirely - completely with the sky above them, then in the "Ship Grove" the bushes and trees on the left of the canvas disappeared, while others moved towards the viewer and occupied the entire canvas. The Build of Pines has leveled out, and the contrast between close and distant is absent. Instead of the previous detailing, I. Shishkin finds another method to attract the viewer’s attention, contrasting either similar or dissimilar motives.
In the center of the picture he highlights several pine trees illuminated by the sun. To the left, the pines go deeper into the grove, now appearing in the light, now hiding in the shadows. On the other side of the canvas a continuous array of greenery is shown. Next to the mighty trees that have lived for hundreds of years, I. Shishkin depicts young shoots replacing the old giants - thin pines stretch upward, speaking of young life. Peaks huge trees hiding behind the picture frame, as if they do not have enough space on the canvas, and our gaze cannot take in them entirely. Right there in the foreground, thin perches are thrown across a small stream, spreading over the sand in a layer clear water. “The Ship Grove” was written by the artist under the impression of the nature of his native places, memorable to I. Shishkin since childhood. In the drawing for the painting he wrote the inscription: “Athanosophical “Ship Grove” near Yelabuga,” and with this canvas Ivan Shishkin completed his creative journey.

An essay based on Ivan Shishkin's painting "Ship Grove".
Now in front of me is a wonderful painting by the Russian artist Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin “Ship Grove”. This work is the pinnacle of the artist’s creativity, where he brought together all his love for Russian nature and his native land.
Shishkin depicted in the picture a sunny summer day in a pine grove. In the foreground we see a small stream. Perhaps it used to be a shallow river, which became shallow over time. The artist masterfully paints water. It looks like the real thing, pine trees, shore and grass are reflected in it. You can even see that there is a slight current. There is probably only ankle-deep water in this stream. This can be judged by the sandy island, by the stones that almost completely rise above the surface of the water, along the banks. In summer, in hot weather, you can walk along this stream barefoot. Or you can follow a log that someone placed on a rock from the shore. People walk through this stream because there is a visible path to the water and to the log.
The fence also indicates that there are people here. It was probably made to prevent the herd of cows from scattering when they came here to drink water. This fence was made a long time ago, and it is clear that in some places the logs have fallen.
In the background we see a grove of majestic pine trees. They have been growing on this land for decades and drinking water from the stream. The artist very subtly conveys all the beauty of these trees. A mighty trunk, heavy branches with green needles stretch upward towards the bright sun. Nearby we also see small pine trees growing on the edge. The grove is very dense, sometimes sunlight does not even penetrate into its depths, and therefore in summer it is cool there and you can hide from the scorching sun and heat.
The whole picture is made in one color scheme. These are green, yellow, brown, beige shades. Thanks to the skillful combination of these colors, the overall tone is set for the picture - sunny, warm and summery.
Painting by I.I. I really liked Shishkin's "Ship Grove". Looking at it, I remember summer, vacations, trips to the forest, and it seems to me that even now the aroma of pine resin emanates from the painting. Probably, the artist also felt it when he worked on this masterpiece of painting.

Description of the painting by I. I. Shishkin “Ship Grove”.
“Afonasovskaya “Ship Grove” near Yelabuga” is the last major work of I. I. Shishkin, his “swan song”. It was created by the artist in 1898 and is a summary of the creative and life experience the artist, all the knowledge that he has accumulated over a considerable creative life.
Majesty, peace and equanimity - these are the main feelings that permeate the picture. We will not find changeable effects in it. Before us is a typical Russian landscape, an image of a pine mast forest on a clear sunny day.
All nature is bathed in slightly pinkish rays of the sun: a coniferous forest illuminated by the sun, a forest hillock, and a clear forest stream with a rocky bottom. The painter is soulful, with great love conveyed the tranquility of the grove, its peaceful silence.
Huge trees, several girths long, give the painting “Ship Grove” a genuine monumentality. The canvas tells in detail about the life of mighty pines. Epic character pine grove with huge giant pines, as if supporting the sky with mighty crowns, the picture is combined with the lyricism of evening lighting. In the painting "Ship Grove" Shishkin again glorifies nature with its slender forests, resinous air, clear water and the gentle, blessed sun. Nature is endowed by the artist with a powerful force that absorbs everything base, random, and petty. But at the same time, Shishkin never tires of admiring the most insignificant details from the life of the Russian forest: roots crawling out of the ground, stumps, overgrown honey mushrooms, broken branches and sun spots on the soft green grass.
The author’s feelings are conveyed to us - it’s as if we are inhaling the tart smell of heated pine bark and admiring the trembling of the sun’s glare on the edge. And looking at this monumental work, following Shishkin, we involuntarily feel proud of the majestic beauty and immensity of our homeland.

Painting: 1898
Canvas, oil.
Size: 165 × 252 cm

Description of the painting “Ship Grove” by I. Shishkin

Artist: Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin
Title of the painting: “Ship Grove”
Painting: 1898
Canvas, oil.
Size: 165 × 252 cm

Since the 18th century, Korabelnaya Roshcha near Nizhny Afanasovo was known for the fact that pine trees were harvested here for the masts of ships that were rafted down the Kama River. In fact, the pine forest provided the entire Russian fleet. Now, centuries later, there are holiday homes, hotels, tennis courts, saunas and even discos. And all thanks to the fact that I. Shishkin glorified this place by painting the painting “Ship Grove near Yelabuga.”

This artist was quite popular among his contemporaries. The word “Shishkin” at that time meant another landscape “hit”, hung in a provincial canteen or in luxury home tradesman.

He knew how to bypass the requirements of the academic landscape, where the nobility of painting or its identification with perfect art. If you look at the nature that Shishkin’s paintings depict, this absolute nature, where there is no “I” of the artist. His voice is one with the voice of a pine forest or a lonely pine or rye. By the way, about pine trees. They are present in every picture, as, indeed, are the spruce trees with roots crawling out of the ground. Shishkin’s world is also filled with boulders overgrown with moss, bushes and dead wood, grass and ferns with huge leaves.

Looking at the paintings of this artist, each of us sees the very nature that Russian fairy tales told about or which seems to be traditional Russian. If we consider the coloristic features of Shishkin’s paintings, it is impossible not to notice the riot of green shades, the brown trunks of pine and spruce trees organically combined with them, the play of sunsets, dawns and middays. Researchers put Shishkin’s talent on a par with Rembrandt, Da Vinci and Velazquez, and everyone has known about the painting “Ship Grove” since childhood.

This painting is the end of it all creative path the painter, his farewell song, where he once again turned to his favorite theme coniferous trees. The thin growth of young pines seems to show that he will be replaced by new, but no less talented masters of the brush.

He promotes the “Ship Grove” and the idea of ​​the cycle and eternity of life, in which centuries-old pines will be illuminated by the sun and hidden in the shadow of the sunset, giving many generations the opportunity to enjoy their contemplation. This picture is also a kind of hymn to the native land, its eternal beauty and inexhaustible strength.

When we hear the phrase “Russian landscape,” we immediately imagine this particular coniferous forest, with its edge bathed in the summer sun. Its light illuminates the foliage and ignites a real fireworks display of glare, radiance and flashes from the rays of the heavenly body. Anyone who has ever seen the painting “Ship Grove” will certainly say that they smelled the smell of pine – so tart and familiar.

The sun in the picture warms everything. Its golden yellow, ocher and even rusty hues fill the stream with little masonry running through it. Moreover, the latter is the only evidence of the presence of a person in the picture. Take a closer look at the soil peeking out from the spring - a California gold miner's dream: golden light permeates every grain of sand.

At first glance, it seems that the picture shows only dull shades, because in fact, the ship’s groves are not famous for their riot of colors. The same can be said about the vegetation - only pine trees, but this is the main feature of a pine forest.

But take a closer look at the canvas: it is so majestic and at the same time everyday that it may well become the standard of Russian nature. There is absolutely no place for base and small details– the rich green pines simply absorb them with their mighty appearance.

If we look at the color scheme of the “Ship Grove”, we can see green strokes of grass against the background of reddish spots of sandy soil, the same as the dried vegetation. The trunks of the pine trees are bright and golden – they exude warmth, the harmony of which is brought about by the bluish-purple tints of the bark. The lush greenery of the pine trees seems to beckon with its ocher, umber and turquoise tones. A perfectly pure shade of blue sky! It seems to push the reddish-red shades of the earth to sound. Look at the stream: there is no reflection of the sky in it, which is not at all a lack of skill of the artist - this is what today is called a three-dimensional view.

“Ship Grove” pacifies and brings equanimity, calmness and positive emotions. This is not surprising: the artist is not looking for the shimmer of the dawn morning, playing rain, mysterious fog - he moved away from these familiar details.

This picture is often compared and often confused with “Pine Forest”, without noticing the true difference. And it is present and lies in the fact that “Pine Forest” is an image of trees that merge with the sky, and “Ship Grove” somewhat shifts the compositional plan. The bushes and trees that the artist usually placed on the left side of the canvas disappear, replacing them with central trunks that seem to move towards the viewer. Pines now grow more evenly; there is no such usual contrast between near and distant objects. Shishkin replaces detail with another method of attracting attention - he contrasts several groups that carry different semantic loads.

For example, on the left side he focuses on several pine trees that are illuminated by the sun. The trees a little to the left seem to be trying to hide in the grove, now appearing in the light, now running into the shadows. IN right side the canvas is a green massif that coexists quite peacefully with centuries-old trees. The young shoots seem to be trying to reach the ancient pines, whose branches stretch far beyond the top of the canvas - as if they do not have enough space. Another example of antithesis in “Ship Grove” is a fragile bridge made of thin poles spanning a stream.

“The Ship Grove” is called the largest in size among all the paintings by I. Shishkin and they say that it is a symbol of the heroic power of the Russian expanses. The concept of this painting is one of the most monumental in Russian painting and, at the same time, the most ambiguous. The canvas became the swan song of the artist, who is still known today. Many landscape painters of our day are unlikely to be able to reach his level and become one of our national symbols.

Shishkin I. “Ship Grove”:
History of the painting

The rare popularity of Ivan Shishkin among his contemporaries and especially among subsequent generations also had its downside. Numerous copies of his paintings were usually hung in provincial station waiting rooms and canteens, reproduced on candy wrappers, and all this, of course, contributed to the artist’s wide popularity. But its true meaning in Russian art sometimes became dim and narrowed because of this.

I. Shishkin did not ennoble nature in accordance with the aesthetic requirements of academicism, and she does not need it. For an artist, nature is nobility itself; it is nature that can ennoble a person both directly and in its reproduction by art. All contemporaries and subsequent generations of art critics noted that the personality of the artist himself was dissolved in nature, delighted with it. I. Shishkin did not look into himself, did not listen to his “I”, he surveyed the world enthusiastically, in complete distraction from himself, humiliating himself before the creations of beautiful nature. Many artists, depicting nature, also showed their inner world, but I. Shishkin’s voice completely coincided with the voice of nature. The main creative achievements of Shishkin the artist are precisely related to the epic depiction of the national features of the Russian landscape.

The name of Ivan Shishkin is associated with the viewer’s idea of ​​a leisurely and majestic narrative about the life of a Russian forest, about the wilds of the forest, filled with the smell of resin and rotting windbreaks. His huge canvases were like a detailed story about the life of mighty ship groves, shady oak forests and expansive fields with ripe rye bending in the wind. In these stories, the artist did not miss a single detail and flawlessly depicted everything: the age of the trees, their character, the soil on which they grow, and how the roots are exposed on the edges of sandy cliffs, and how boulders lie in the clear waters of a forest stream, and how there are spots of sunlight on the green ant grass...

We are surrounded on all sides by heroic pines and gigantic mossy spruce trees with fancifully curving branches. Everything on the artist’s canvases was filled with numerous, lovingly painted signs of forest life: roots crawling out of the ground, huge stones-boulders, stumps overgrown with moss and honey mushrooms, bushes and broken branches, grass and ferns. All this was studied to the smallest detail, chosen and written by I. Shishkin, who spent half his life in the forest and even in appearance resembled an old forest man.

The artist’s work is an enthusiastic ode glorifying the epic beauty and power of the Russian forest. No wonder I. Kramskoy said: “Before Shishkin in Russia there were far-fetched landscapes, such as had never existed anywhere.” Even taking into account the categorical nature of such a statement, I. Kramskoy did not sin too much against historical truth. The majestic Russian nature, which served as a source of poetic images in folklore and literature, has indeed not been depicted so vividly in landscape painting for a long time. And only the coloring of I. Shishkin’s landscapes was distinguished by the sophistication of the richest shades of green, the soft palette of which organically included brown spots on tree trunks. If he depicts the water surface of a pond, then it shimmers with the mother-of-pearl of the shaky reflections of trees, bushes and grasses. And nowhere does the artist fall into salonism; a sentimental perception of nature was alien to I. Shishkin. This is what allowed him to paint a truly epic masterpiece in 1898 - the painting "Ship Grove", which is considered one of the pinnacles of the artist's work.

The canvas shows a typically Russian forest landscape with a rising, mighty wall of a dense coniferous forest. Its edge is literally bathed in the rays of the blessed summer sun. Its dazzling light not only gilded the crowns of the trees, but also, igniting the quivering radiance of the glare, penetrated into the depths of the forest. The impression the viewer gets from the painting is as if in reality he is inhaling the tart smell of a sun-warmed pine forest.

The water of the ferruginous stream flowing out from behind the trees also seems to be heated to the very bottom. Every grain of sand in the exposed soil of its riverbed is permeated with light.

It seemed that there were no particularly bright colors in this picture, just as there are none in the pine forest in reality - with its monotonous coloring of the greenery of the trees and their trunks. There is no diversity of plant forms in the picture, just as this is not found in the pine forest, where only one species of tree reigns. There is still a lot missing, it would seem...

Meanwhile, the picture immediately captivates the viewer with the national characteristics of the Russian landscape - its majestic beauty, strength and strength. The specific earthly forces of nature in I. Shishkin seem unearthly powerful, absorbing everything random, base and petty.

The first impression of the picture is majestic calm and equanimity. I. Shishkin wrote it without looking for those changeable effects - morning, rain, fog, which he had before. This canvas seems to resemble “Pine Forest”, but the difference between them is very significant. If the trees in “Pine Forest” were depicted entirely - completely with the sky above them, then in “Ship Grove” the bushes and trees on the left of the canvas disappeared, while others moved towards the viewer and occupied the entire canvas. The structure of the pines has leveled out, and there is no contrast between close and distant. Instead of the previous detailing, I. Shishkin finds another technique to attract the viewer’s attention, contrasting either similar or dissimilar motifs.

In the center of the picture he highlights several pine trees illuminated by the sun. To the left, the pines go deeper into the grove, now appearing in the light, now hiding in the shadows. On the other side of the canvas a continuous array of greenery is shown. Next to the mighty trees that have lived for hundreds of years, I. Shishkin depicts young shoots replacing the old giants - thin pines stretch upward, speaking of young life. The tops of the huge trees are hidden behind the frame of the picture, as if they do not have enough space on the canvas, and our gaze cannot take in them entirely. Right there in the foreground, thin perches are thrown across a small stream, spreading across the sand like a layer of clear water.

“Ship Grove” was written by the artist under the impression of the nature of his native places, memorable to I. Shishkin since childhood. In the drawing for the painting, he wrote the inscription: “Athanosophical Ship Grove near Yelabuga,” and with this canvas Ivan Shishkin completed his creative journey.

We continue the project “The History of One Painting”. In it we talk about the most famous paintings from St. Petersburg museums. Today we are talking about last job the great Russian landscape painter, in which he depicted a view of a pine forest near Yelabuga, familiar from childhood.

1. "Ship Grove" is in in a certain sense the artist’s will, because it became his last painting. Despite the apparent similarity with other landscapes created by Shishkin (for example, “Morning in a Pine Forest”), this work seems to summarize his entire creative experience. Here numerous motifs scattered throughout the master’s previous works are woven into one knot. And one more nuance: the size of the canvas exceeds all others created by the painter.

2. Shishkin became famous primarily as a landscape painter. His element was nature, and not only Central Russian, but also nature Northern Europe. The artist was interested in calm, dim beauty. Contrary to popular belief, Ivan Ivanovich did not create exclusively Russian landscapes. After graduating from the Academy of Arts, he traveled and worked a lot, including in Germany and Finland. By the way, his eldest daughter from her first marriage, Lydia moved to Suomi after her marriage.

3. As for “Ship Grove,” it appeared under the impression that Shishkin knew from childhood. The canvas depicts the nature of the native places of the artist, a native of the Vyatka province. The landscape was based on life studies, made by Ivan Ivanovich in his native Kama forests. In the drawing for the painting he wrote the inscription: “Athanasophical Ship Grove near Yelabuga.”

4. It was not difficult for researchers to find out that the canvas depicts a pine forest adjacent to Yelabuga from the northwest. Here, in Bolshoi and Nizhny Afanasovo, mast pines have been harvested since the 18th century. Actually, this is where the name came from - “Ship Grove”. Centenary trees up to forty meters high and about half a meter in diameter have been used for the construction of ships for a long time. High light the trunk went to the masts of ships.

5. Work on the painting continued for three years. The first sketches date back to 1895. The plot is quite simple. The artist, as always, gave great value details, he carefully outlined almost every stem and every blade of grass. In front of the viewer is a clearing filled with sun. And then gradually the canvas becomes increasingly absorbed by darkness.

6. Experts note that in this picture the Shishkinsky forest seems to be bathed in sunlight and a variety of colors and shades, uncharacteristic of the earlier Shishkin. Despite the usual dullness, the palette of the canvas is very diverse. Many even find traces of the influence of the Impressionists here.

7. This work is often compared and even confused with “Sosnovy Bor”, without noticing an important nuance. “Pine Forest” is an image of trees that merge with the sky, and the composition of “Ship Grove” is completely different. Instead of bushes and trees in the left corner of the picture, there are trunks located in the very center. The pines seem to grow more evenly, there is no contrast between near and distant objects. Shishkin replaced detailing with another method of attracting attention - he contrasted several groups that carry different semantic loads.

8. The canvas was first shown at the 26th exhibition of the Itinerants, held in St. Petersburg from February 22 to March 29, 1898. The work immediately received numerous rave reviews from both ordinary visitors and colleagues in the workshop. For example, the artist Savitsky could not contain his emotions and wrote a letter to the author with the words: “The picture started playing, the note is strong, wonderful - congratulations, I’m not the only one, everyone is delighted, bravo... The exhibition smelled of pine! The sun, the light has arrived!..”

9. The exhibition had not yet ended when on March 8 (March 20, new style), 1898, the landscape painter died in his studio at the easel, on which stood a new, just begun canvas, “Forest Kingdom.” D. Uspensky wrote about this in the newspaper Nedelya: “ Traveling exhibition in mourning: shortly after its opening, Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin died at the age of 67. It was wonderful person", in appearance he is stern, in fact he is kind, in appearance he is a volost foreman, in reality he is a very fine artist."

10. Until now, the painting “Ship Grove” is considered one of the most popular in Shishkin’s work and, by the way, widely reproduced. She can be found on postcards and stamps, on T-shirts, carpets and even (attention!) photo wallpapers.

SPECIFICALLY

Ivan Ivanovich SHISHKIN (1832-1898).

In 1852 he moved to Moscow and entered the School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. After completing the course, four years later, the talented student was advised to continue his education at the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts.

Shishkin began to become interested in landscapes while still in school. And in his first year at the academy, he was awarded a small silver medal for “View in the vicinity of St. Petersburg.” In 1858, the artist received a large silver medal for the painting “View on the island of Valaam”.

The successes achieved allowed the artist to travel abroad as a fellow of the Academy. He visited Munich, Zurich, Prague and Düsseldorf.

In 1865, Ivan Ivanovich was awarded the title of academician. In subsequent years, they were created famous masterpieces: “Cutting wood” (1867), “Pines illuminated by the sun” (1886), “Morning in a pine forest” (1889, with the bears written by K. A. Savitsky).