deadwood. Etude 1893 Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin (1832-1898)

Description of Ivan Shishkin’s painting "Valebok".

Among Russian landscape painters there is none whose skill, whose ability to capture nature on canvas is comparable to that of Ivan Shishkin. His ability to subtly reproduce to the smallest detail any bush or tree is truly amazing.

Spruces, birches, oaks - all of them were transferred to the canvas with photographic accuracy, without unnecessary embellishment or belittling. Leaves, branches, bark - all this was reproduced very accurately. And even in such minute details as the soil on which the trees, grass and rocks grow, Shishkin was unfailingly accurate.

It would take a lot of time to list all the canvases by the artist, because his artistic legacy is not limited to the famous "Morning in a Pine Forest.

The lion’s share of his works are "occasional" sketches, depicting nature in all its manifestations. The artist began to create them as a student of the Academy of Arts, in order to subsequently refer to the genre of sketch throughout his life, improving. The example of later studies shows how the artist seeks to more accurately convey the nuances of nature, the expression of images using the principles of tonal painting.

The studies Valednik (1893) attest to Shishkin’s explorations. Two peculiarities attract attention in this painting. The first is the unusually light tone of the picture, indicating that the artist has chosen the time of dawn as the image. A similar mood is present in the already mentioned "Morning...", however, even there the light colors do not sound so piercing as in "Valezhnik".

In addition, the choice of the subject - deadwood, that is, trees that, broken by the storm or for other reasons, have fallen to the ground, is also interesting. This only proves Shishkin’s interest in any, even microscopic and imperceptible changes in nature, which, in his opinion, are quite worthy of depiction.