Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin, like none of the landscape painters, was able to capture in his canvases both the character of the Russian people and the image of the national nature. In the landscape image of the artist, “the spirit and the image of the great, mighty space”, called Russia, sounds like.
In the last decade of his life, the artist is full of amazing creative power. In the domestic art was then a new topic – the theme of the forest as a symbol of Russian power. The image of the huge and impressive coniferous forest embodied all the peculiarity of the national landscape. Before us is an artist who affirms a positive ideal – the beauty and power of his native nature.
As never, the role of light in its landscapes increases, the mastery of color transfer is enriched, the very perception of nature becomes more sincere. Simple, it would seem, stories differ in the depth of emotional experience. But Shishkin’s realistic creative method, based on a deep study of nature, remains unchanged. His admiration of nature is not dull over the years. Reviewers of mobile art exhibitions wrote that, coming to Shishkin’s landscapes, it seems like you smell a pine and want to take a deep breath, like in a forest.
Light shadows glide along the crust, fall to the ground. The air seems to be filled with warmth. Representing those lighted, now shrouded in trunks, and in the distance trees that are visible already to the very tops, Shishkin creates the impression of a large, spacious and light forest. Cutting the frame of the treetops, it enhances the impression of an unlimited height of trees, which seem to lack space on the canvas.
Magnificent slender pines are given in all their plastic beauty. Their scaly bark is written using many colors. In the picture there is not a single fragment written by an indifferent, habitually skillful hand. The artist seems to live one life with the nature depicted by him.
