Ivan Shishkin. Morning in pine forest. 1889 Tretyakov Gallery
“Morning in a Pine Forest” is the most famous picture Ivan Shishkin. No, take it higher. This is the most popular painting in Russia.
But this fact, it seems to me, brings little benefit to the masterpiece itself. It even harms him.
When it's too popular, it flashes everywhere. In every textbook. On candy wrappers (where the wild popularity of the painting began 100 years ago).
As a result, the viewer loses interest in the picture. We glance at her quickly with the thought “Oh, it’s her again...”. And we pass by.
For the same reason I didn’t write about her. Although I’ve been writing articles about masterpieces for several years now. And one might be surprised how I passed by this blockbuster. But now you know why.
I'm correcting myself. Because I want to look at Shishkin’s masterpiece with you more closely.
Why “Morning in a Pine Forest” is a masterpiece
Shishkin was a realist to the core. He depicted the forest very realistically. Choosing colors carefully. Such realism easily draws the viewer into the picture.
Just look at color solutions.
Pale emerald pine needles in the shade. Light green color of young grass in the rays of the morning sun. Dark ocher pine needles on a fallen tree.
The fog is also made from a combination of different shades. Greenish in the shade. Bluish in the light. And it turns yellow closer to the treetops.
Ivan Shishkin. Morning in a pine forest (fragment). 1889 Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow
All this complexity creates the overall impression of being in this forest. You feel this forest. And don't just see it. The craftsmanship is incredible.
But Shishkin’s paintings, alas, are often compared to photographs. Considering the master deeply old-fashioned. Why such realism if there are photo images?
I do not agree with this position. It is important what angle the artist chooses, what kind of lighting, what kind of fog and even moss. All this together reveals to us a piece of the forest from a special side. In a way we wouldn't see him. But we see through the eyes of an artist.
And through his gaze we experience pleasant emotions: delight, inspiration, nostalgia. And this is the point: to provoke the viewer to a spiritual response.
Savitsky – assistant or co-author of the masterpiece?
The story of Konstantin Savitsky’s co-authorship seems strange to me. In all sources you will read that Savitsky was an animal painter, which is why he volunteered to help his friend Shishkin. Like, such realistic bears are his merit.
But if you look at Savitsky’s works, you will immediately understand that animal painting is NOT his main genre.
He was typical. He often wrote about the poor. Helped with the help of paintings for the disadvantaged. Here is one of his outstanding works, “Meeting of an Icon.”
Konstantin Savitsky. Meeting the icon. 1878 Tretyakov Gallery. Yes, in addition to the crowd, there are also horses. Savitsky really knew how to portray them very realistically.
But Shishkin also easily coped with a similar task, if you look at his animalistic works. In my opinion, he did no worse than Savitsky.
Ivan Shishkin. Goby. 1863 Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow Therefore, it is not entirely clear why Shishkin commissioned Savitsky to write the bears. I'm sure he could handle it himself. They were friends. Perhaps this was an attempt to help a friend financially? Shishkin was more successful. He received serious money for his paintings.
For the bears, Savitsky received 1/4 of the fee from Shishkin - as much as 1000 rubles (with our money this is about 0.5 million rubles!) It is unlikely that Savitsky could have received such an amount for a whole own work.
Formally, Tretyakov was right. After all, Shishkin thought through the entire composition. Even the poses and positions of the bears. This is obvious if you look at the sketches.
Co-authorship as a phenomenon in Russian painting
Moreover, this is not the first such case in Russian painting. I immediately remembered Aivazovsky’s painting “Pushkin’s Farewell to the Sea.” Pushkin in the painting of the great marine painter was painted by... Ilya Repin.
But his name is not in the picture. Although these are not bears. But still great poet. Which needs to not only be depicted realistically. But to be expressive. So that the same farewell to the sea can be read in the eyes.
Ivan Aivazovsky (co-authored with I. Repin). Pushkin's farewell to the sea. 1877 All-Russian Museum A.S. Pushkin, St. Petersburg. Wikipedia.org In my opinion, this is a more difficult task than depicting bears. Nevertheless, Repin did not insist on co-authorship. On the contrary, I was incredibly happy working together with the great Aivazovsky.
Savitsky was prouder. I was offended by Tretyakov. But he continued to be friends with Shishkin.
But we cannot deny that without the bears this painting would not have become the artist's most recognizable painting. This would be another Shishkin masterpiece. Majestic and breathtaking landscape.
But he wouldn't be so popular. It was the bears who played their role. This means that Savitsky should not be completely discounted.
How to rediscover “Morning in a Pine Forest”
And in conclusion, I would like to return again to the problem of overdose of the image of a masterpiece. How can you look at it with fresh eyes?
I think it's possible. To do this, look at the little-known sketch for the painting.
Ivan Shishkin. Sketch for the painting “Morning in a Pine Forest.” 1889 Tretyakov Gallery, MoscowIt is done with quick strokes. The figures of the bears are only outlined and painted by Shishkin himself. Particularly impressive is the light in the form of golden vertical strokes.
Plot
With rare exceptions, the subject of Shishkin's paintings (if you look at this issue broadly) is one - nature. Ivan Ivanovich is an enthusiastic, loving contemplator. And the viewer becomes an eyewitness to the painter’s meeting with his native expanses.
Shishkin was an extraordinary expert on the forest. He knew everything about trees of different species and noticed errors in the drawing. During plein airs, the artist’s students were ready to literally hide in the bushes, just so as not to hear criticism in the spirit of “Such a birch cannot exist” or “these pine trees are fake.”
The students were so afraid of Shishkin that they hid in the bushes
As for people and animals, they occasionally appeared in Ivan Ivanovich’s paintings, but they were more of a background than an object of attention. “Morning in a Pine Forest” is perhaps the only painting where bears compete with the forest. For this, thanks to one of Shishkin’s best friends - the artist Konstantin Savitsky. He suggested such a composition and depicted animals. True, Pavel Tretyakov, who bought the canvas, erased Savitsky’s name, so for a long time the bears were attributed to Shishkin.
Portrait of Shishkin by I. N. Kramskoy. 1880
Context
Before Shishkin, it was fashionable to paint Italian and Swiss landscapes. “Even in those rare cases when artists took on the task of depicting Russian localities, Russian nature became Italianized, adjusted to the ideal of Italian beauty,” recalled Alexandra Komarova, Shishkin’s niece. Ivan Ivanovich was the first who painted Russian nature realistically with such ecstasy. So that looking at his paintings, a person would say: “There is a Russian spirit there, it smells like Russia.”
Rye. 1878
And now the story of how Shishkin’s canvas became a wrapper. Around the same time that “Morning in a Pine Forest” was presented to the public, Julius Geis, head of the Einem Partnership, was brought a candy to try: a thick layer of almond praline between two wafer plates and enrobed chocolate. The confectioner liked the candy. Geis thought about the name. Then his gaze lingered on a reproduction of a painting by Shishkin and Savitsky. This is how the idea of “Teddy Bear” came about.
The wrapper, familiar to everyone, appeared in 1913, created by the artist Manuil Andreev. To the plot of Shishkin and Savitsky, he added a frame from spruce branches and the Stars of Bethlehem - in those years, candy was the most expensive and desired gift for the Christmas holidays. Over time, the wrapper has gone through various adjustments, but remains conceptually the same.
The fate of the artist
“Lord, will my son really be a painter!” — Ivan Shishkin’s mother lamented when she realized that she could not convince her son, who had decided to become an artist. The boy was terribly afraid of becoming an official. And, by the way, it’s good that he didn’t. The fact is that Shishkin had an uncontrollable urge to draw. Literally every sheet that was in Ivan’s hands was covered with drawings. Just imagine what the official Shishkin could do with the documents!
Shishkin knew all the botanical details about trees
Ivan Ivanovich studied painting first in Moscow, then in St. Petersburg. Life was hard. The artist Pyotr Neradovsky, whose father studied and lived with Ivan Ivanovich, wrote in his memoirs: “Shishkin was so poor that he often did not have his own boots. To go out somewhere from the house, it happened that he put on his father's boots. On Sundays they went to lunch together with my father’s sister.”
In the wild north. 1891
But everything was forgotten in the summer in the open air. Together with Savrasov and other classmates, they went somewhere out of town and painted sketches from life there. “It was there, in nature, that we really learned... In nature, we studied, and also took a break from the casts,” Shishkin recalled. Even then he chose the theme of his life: “I truly love the Russian forest and only write about it. The artist needs to choose the one thing that he loves most... There is no way to throw it away.” By the way, Shishkin learned to masterfully paint Russian nature abroad. He studied in the Czech Republic, Germany, and Switzerland. The paintings brought from Europe brought in the first decent money.
After the death of his wife, brother and son, Shishkin drank for a long time and could not work
Meanwhile, in Russia, the Peredvizhniki protested against the academicians. Shishkin was incredibly happy about this. In addition, many of the rebels were friends of Ivan Ivanovich. True, over time he quarreled with both of them and was very worried about this.
Shishkin died suddenly. I sat down at the canvas, just about to start working, and yawned once. and that's all. This is exactly what the painter wanted - “instantly, right away, so as not to suffer.” Ivan Ivanovich was 66 years old.
Exposition
The film is popular due to its entertaining plot. However true value The work is a beautifully expressed state of nature, seen by the artist in Belovezhskaya Pushcha. What is shown is not a dense dense forest, but sunlight, making his way through the columns of giants. You can feel the depth of the ravines and the power of centuries-old trees. And the sunlight seems to timidly peek into this dense forest. The frolicking cubs feel the approach of morning. We are observers of wildlife and its inhabitants.
Story
Savitsky suggested the idea for the painting to Shishkin. Savitsky painted the bears in the film itself. These bears, with some differences in poses and numbers (at first there were two of them), appear in preparatory drawings and sketches. Savitsky turned out the bears so well that he even signed the painting together with Shishkin. However, when Tretyakov acquired the painting, he removed Savitsky’s signature, leaving the authorship to Shishkin. After all, in a painting, Tretyakov said, “from the concept to the execution, everything speaks about the manner of painting, about creative method, characteristic of Shishkin."
- Most Russians call this picture“Three Bears”, despite the fact that there are not three, but four bears in the picture. This is apparently due to the fact that during the Soviet era, grocery stores sold “Bear-toed Bear” candies with a reproduction of this picture on a candy wrapper, which were popularly called “Three Bears.”
- Another erroneous common name is “Morning in pine forest"(tautology: pine forest is a pine forest).
Notes
Literature
- Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin. Correspondence. Diary. Contemporaries about the artist / Comp. I. N. Shuvalova - Leningrad: Art, Leningrad branch, 1978;
- Alenov M. A., Evangulova O. S., Livshits L. I. Russian art XI - early XX centuries. - M.: Art, 1989;
- Anisov L. Shishkin. - M.: Young Guard, 1991. - (Series: Life of Remarkable People);
- State Russian Museum. Leningrad. Painting of the XII - early XX centuries. - M.: art, 1979;
- Dmitrienko A. F., Kuznetsova E. V., Petrova O. F., Fedorova N. A. 50 short biographies masters of Russian art. - Leningrad, 1971;
- Lyaskovskaya O. A. Plein air in Russian paintings of the 19th century century. - M.: Art, 1966.
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2010.
See what “Morning in a Pine Forest” is in other dictionaries: - “MORNING IN A PINE FOREST”, Canada Latvia, BURRACUDA FILM PRODUCTION/ATENTAT CULTURE, 1998, color, 110 min. Documentary . About the creative self-expression of six young people, the search for mutual understanding through creativity. Their lives are shown during...
Encyclopedia of Cinema MORNING IN A PINE FOREST - Painting by I.I. Shishkina. Created in 1889, located in Tretyakov Gallery . Dimensions 139 × 213 cm. One of the most famous landscapes in Shishkin’s work depicts a dense impenetrable forest* middle zone Russia. In the thicket of the forest on fallen trees... ...
Linguistic and regional dictionary Jarg. stud. First scheduled morning training session. (Recorded 2003) ...
Large dictionary of Russian sayingsShishkin Ivan Ivanovich - king of the forestIt just so happened that for the packaging of the “Teddy Bear” sweets and their analogues a century ago, designers chose a painting by Shishkin and Savitsky. And if Shishkin is known for his forest landscapes, then Savitsky is remembered by the general public exclusively for his bears.
Shishkin was an extraordinary expert on the forest. He knew everything about trees of different species and noticed errors in the drawing. During plein airs, the artist’s students were ready to literally hide in the bushes, just so as not to hear criticism in the spirit of “Such a birch cannot exist” or “these pine trees are fake.”
With rare exceptions, the subject of Shishkin's paintings (if you look at this issue broadly) is one - nature. Ivan Ivanovich is an enthusiastic, loving contemplator. And the viewer becomes an eyewitness to the painter’s meeting with his native expanses.
As for people and animals, they occasionally appeared in Ivan Ivanovich’s paintings, but they were more of a background than an object of attention. “Morning in a Pine Forest” is perhaps the only painting where bears compete with the forest. For this, thanks to one of Shishkin’s best friends - the artist Konstantin Savitsky.
The idea for the painting was suggested to Shishkin by Savitsky, who later acted as a co-author and depicted the figures of the bear cubs. These bears, with some differences in poses and numbers (at first there were two of them), appear in the preparatory drawings and sketches. Savitsky turned out the animals so well that he even signed the painting together with Shishkin. Savitsky himself told his family: “The painting was sold for 4 thousand, and I am a participant in the 4th share.”
The painting conveys in detail the state of nature seen by the artist on Gorodomlya Island. What is shown is not a dense dense forest, but sunlight breaking through the columns of tall trees. You can feel the depth of the ravines, the power of centuries-old trees, the sunlight seems to timidly peek into this dense forest. The frolicking cubs feel the approach of morning.
Portrait of Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin (1832-1898) by I. N. Kramskoy. 1880
Konstantin Apollonovich Savitsky
(1844 - 1905)
Photo.
Among all Russian landscape painters, Shishkin undoubtedly belongs to the place of the most powerful artist. In all his works, he reveals himself to be an amazing connoisseur of plant forms - trees, foliage, grass, reproducing them with a subtle understanding of how general, and the smallest distinctive features any species of trees, bushes and grasses. Did he take on the image of a pine tree or spruce forest, individual pines and spruces, just like their combinations and mixtures, received their true face, without any embellishment or understatement, - that view and with those particulars that are fully explained and determined by the soil and climate where the artist made them grow. Whether he depicted oaks or birches, they took on completely truthful forms in his foliage, branches, trunks, roots and in all details. The very area under the trees - stones, sand or clay, uneven soil overgrown with ferns and other forest herbs, dry leaves, brushwood, dead wood, etc. - received in Shishkin's paintings and drawings the appearance of perfect reality, as close as possible to reality.
Among all the artist’s works, the painting “Morning in a pine forest " Its idea was suggested to Ivan Shishkin by Konstantin Apollonovich Savitsky, but the possibility cannot be ruled out that the impetus for the appearance of this canvas was the landscape of 1888 “Fog in a pine forest ", written, in all likelihood, like "Windfall ", after a trip to the Vologda forests. Apparently, “Fog in a Pine Forest,” which was successfully exhibited at traveling exhibition in Moscow (now in a private collection in the Czech Republic) gave birth to a mutual desire among Shishkin and Savitsky to paint a landscape with a similar motif, including a unique genre scene with frolicking bears. After all, the leitmotif of the famous painting of 1889 is precisely the fog in a pine forest.
The entertaining genre motif introduced into the picture greatly contributed to its popularity, but the true value of the work was the beautifully expressed state of nature. This is not just a dense pine forest, but a morning in the forest with its fog that has not yet dissipated, with the lightly pinked tops of huge pines, and cold shadows in the thickets. You can feel the depth of the ravine, the wilderness. The presence of a bear family located on the edge of this ravine gives the viewer a feeling of remoteness and deafness of the wild forest - truly a “bear corner”.
Painting "Ship Grove "(the largest in size in Shishkin’s work) is, as it were, the last, final image in the epic he created, symbolizing the heroic Russian strength. The implementation of such a monumental plan as this work indicates that the sixty-six-year-old artist was in full bloom of his creative powers, but this was where his path in art ended. On March 8 (20), 1898, he died in his studio at the easel, on which stood a new, just begun painting, “Forest Kingdom.”