Ivan Shyshkin: painting and graphic arts - The National Art Museum Minsk 2012
Ivan Shyshkin: painting and graphic arts - The National Art Museum of the Republic of Belarus 25 January - 8 April 2012
Ivan Shyshkin: painting and graphic arts
Venue: The National Art Museum of the Republic of Belarus
Location: Minsk
Date: 25 January - 8 April 2012
As Ivan Kramskoy said, Ivan Shyshkin (1832–1898) was “a mile stone in the Russian landscape development”. He is one of the greatest Russian landscape-painters of realistic trend of the 2nd half of the 19th century.
The collection of the National Art Museum of the Republic of Belarus has over 30 fine arts and graphic arts paintings by the master. These works had been purposefully bought from private collectors of Moscow, Leningrad, Minsk, Kaunas, Gorky for over half a century. They also arrived in the result of inter-museum exchange. The Museum’s collection of Ivan Shyshkin gives an opportunity to gain impression about the artist’s oeuvre development stages (1850–1890-s) and diversity of motives and techniques, which he turned to.
Native of the town of Yelabuga in Vyatka guberniya, Ivan Shyshkin started his art education in Moscow school for painting and sculpture (1852–1856). Then he completed a course in the Imperial Academy of Arts in Saint-Petersburg (1856–1860). The student period of Ivan Shyshkin’s oeuvre was influenced by the romanticism art. “Landscape” (middle 1850-s) has a distinct “side scene” arrangement of plans typical for the academic school, and gleam in the area depth usual for romanticism.
Being one of the best students of the Academy of Arts, in 1860 Ivan Shyshkin won a big golden medal which gave him an opportunity to go for a scholarship trip abroad. He visited Germany, Switzerland, France and other countries. He had an interest in the German landscape school. At the same time the artist wrote in his diary that “the German landscape was unattractive and disgustingly clear”. After his coming back to Russia, majestic nature of the native land became a true school for Ivan Shyshkin.
In 1870, when he was already an acknowledged master, Ivan Shyshkin became a founding member of the Society for Itinerant Art Exhibitions (SIAE) and took an active part in its activity. In 1870-s Ivan Shyshkin’s landscape philosophy was formed and it became the basis for his many-years work: to find true beauty and poetry in simplicity (“Forest Edge”, 1875; “Sandy Bank”, 1879).
Wishing to be authentic, the artist very thoroughly worked over the smallest details, but at the same time he presented the landscape in a panoramic way and showed the most typical, significant and sublime.
As a rule, nature of Ivan Shyshkin’s landscapes was most often illuminated by the midday sun rays. Even day light allowed the artist to fully show all the diversity, all the details of the surrounding reality (“Stubblefield. Palesse Landscape”, 1884; “In Reserved Oak Grove of Peter the Great”, 1886; “Pine Forest”, 1886, “In Forest”, 1880-s, etc). The artist rarely tried to show transition states or change of the time of day.
Studying natural diversity, always looking for new material, Ivan Shyshkin travelled a lot. Thus, in 1883 he visited Palesse, and in 1892 – Belavezhskaya puscha. During the trips the landscape-painter worked over sketches (“Deadwood. Belavezhskaya puscha”, 1892) and painted large canvases (the exhibition shows a fragment of the painting of 1883 “Palesse”).
Till the end of life Ivan Shyshkin was faithful to the road once chosen. The master went on showing his works on SIAE exhibitions. His canvases still amazed with credibility and enjoyed success (“Swamp. Cranes”, 1890; “Old Dead-Fallen Wood. Forest Cemetery”, 1893).
Sketches took a special place in the artist’s oeuvre heritage. The landscape-painter’s friends, artists-itinerants, found them no less interesting than the paintings. Ivan Kramskoy noted: “Ivan Shyshkin just amazes us with his knowledge, draws two or three sketches a day, very complicated sketches indeed and fully completes them. When he is in the nature…. he is as if in his environment; here he knows everything: what, how and why”. Sketches “Sedge” (late 1880-s), “Burdock” (late 1880-s), “Dead-Fallen Wood” (early 1890-s) etc show a sharpened feeling of the form, accurately depict facture, thin colour gradation and flawless drawing.
Ivan Shyshkin had a unique gift of a painter. He could have passed into the Russian art history even if he hadn’t created any fine arts painting. The landscape painter was undoubtedly one of the greatest and most interesting graphic artists of his age. When he was still a student, masterful pen drawings by young Ivan Shyshkin attracted attention of general public and connoisseurs.
Sketches and drawings created by the artist with the graphite pencil in 1870-s are especially interesting. Our Museum’s collection has seven of them. They mostly have completed design with precise and detail working out (“Burdock”, “Windfall”, “Thistle”). Thoroughly made, very authentic, they are not dry and formal, but have a charm of high-level artworks. The very Ivan Shyshkin marked an independent value of these preparatory “applied” materials when in 1891 he arranged an exhibition of his sketches and drawings.
Etches of 1870-s – “Dry Tree-Stems” and “Trees” – show the eye tenacity and the master’s confident hand. While using natural studies to create large artworks, Ivan Shyshkin never fully repeated them in completed paintings. We can only guess which sketch served to create one or another painting.
As if contradicting academic artists who saw mainly exoticism in southern landscapes, Ivan Shyshkin devoted equal attention to both bright sunny reflexes on the white wall and the little stone lying on the road and also to the wayside leaf in his original graphic arts work “Saklya in Crimea. Alupka” (1879).
The landscape-painter rarely used the watercolour technique. Painting “Forest” (1884) created in black watercolour has an amazing gradation of the tone shades. When we look at the page, we have an impression that it was painted in colour.
Etching took a significant place in the artist’s oeuvre and equally in the Russian prints history. We can be confident about the fact that Ivan Shyshkin was a unique figure: in the 2nd half of the 19th century he was the only Russian engraver and landscape-painter of such a high level. Both amount of his heritage and artistic value of the pages created testify this.
Artists often turned to engraving to technically reproduce paintings, and they did not perceive engraving as an independent art kind. Till a certain life period Ivan Shyshkin was not an exclusion from the rule. At first he mastered etching as a useful reproduction way, but later working in this technique became an independent area for work, where the landscape painter achieved great success: he published 4 albums of his own etchings. The album “60 etchings by Ivan Shyshkin” published in 1894 became the final one. The album included pages “Fir-Trees in Shuvalovsky Park” (1886), “Beehives” (1892) exhibited earlier.
Works by Ivan Shyshkin were also published in periodicals. For instance, popular journal “Fine Arts Newsletter” published a number of the artist’s etchings as the appendix to the edition, etchings “Spring” (1885) and “On Kama near Yelabuga” (1885) among them.
The artist also turned to the lithography technique. The lithography album “Pen Sketches on Stone” published in 1868 included the masterfully created work “At Noon”. Ivan Shyshkin had perfect skills in making a pen drawing; perhaps due to this he preferred to use pen in lithography.
Special power, poetry, deep understanding of the surrounding world and unparalleled and fascinating simplicity are felt in graphic arts pages, landscape paintings and large canvases by Ivan Shyshkin.
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