The XIX century in Russia is the time of the appearance of an extraordinary number of talented artists and writers of a world level. Among them, the painter Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin took an outstanding place. The article is dedicated to the creation of one picture - this is Oak Grove. Shishkin painted it in 1887, when he was a mature and long recognized landscape painter.
Brief information about the artist
I. I. Shishkin (1832-1898), having graduated from the Academy of Arts, was sent abroad for an internship. He studied for two years in Germany. For one landscape, painted at that time and sent to his homeland, the painter received the title of academician.
I.I. Shishkin surprised his teachers in Germany with pen works. Some of his drawings are placed in the Dusseldorf Museum along with the best works of European artists. In this article we will pay all attention to the picture "Oak Grove". Shishkin, before writing it, pondered the idea and made sketches for 30 years. We selected drawings and studies, which, in our opinion, are directly related to this work.
Brilliant draftsman
Among the Russian landscape painters there was no stronger artist who so masterfully possessed precisely the drawing. He was most clearly expressed in the works, which are made in one tone. An example is the work “A Woman with a Boy in the Forest” (1868). Here paper, pen, ink, watercolor, varnish are used.
Golden brown tones perfectly convey the sunlight penetrating through the dense crowns and gliding along the powerful trunks of trees that are in the foreground. The foliage and small bushes at the foot of the trunks are finely drawn. Thanks to the monochrome work, everything took a finished form in which any detail would be superfluous. This work already resembles the canvas “Oak Grove”. Shishkin carefully studied, clearly getting pleasure from work, the distinctive features of the oak forest. In the next watercolor we will see a completely different study of the artist.
"Oak illuminated by the sun"
A joyful and vibrant watercolor with whitewash examines to the smallest detail the bark of an age-old tree, the location of its branches, the play of light, which in different ways illuminates certain areas and light shadows. The master does not pass by the attention of how the dried branches of a tree fall, how the grass grows around it, how the trees stand in the background. In the future, this work will leave its mark on the painting “Oak Grove”.
Shishkin uses a completely different color in watercolor, more juicy and rich than in a late large-scale oil painting. The artist conveys the joy and fullness of life to the viewer with this small (26x20 cm) work. The lonely giant oak standing on the edge is a real masterpiece that precedes the Oak Grove. Shishkin, working on other landscapes, always remembered the oak forests and sought to prepare for their image.
90s sketch
Another small work (22x28 cm) is Oaks in Sunlight. The study is already almost a picture of Shishkin's “Oak Grove”: the same silhouettes of trunks, only differently located. Quick brush strokes merge the foliage of the trees into a single whole.
The artist thinks over the future compositional construction and carefully studies chiaroscuro. This, and not the elaboration of details, is the main task of the sketch. Shishkin’s painting “Oak Grove” will be written very similarly, but in a different way. The master will change the arrangement of trees in the foreground and clearly, with photographic accuracy, depict the oak forest.
Oak Grove, Shishkin: Description
The canvas depicts an untouched, virgin forest, lit by the summer sun. In the foreground are two majestic giants who survived more than one century. Here the characteristic quality of the artist was manifested in its entirety - thoroughness in drawing all the smallest details. This is foliage that is natural to the limit, it is grass with delicate, airy flowering dandelions, it is a boulder covered with moss.
The antiquity and power of the oaks harmoniously "coexist" with small details: flowers, grass, bushes, thin young trunks of young trees. The beauty and power of the oak forest is transmitted through spreading crowns, which seem to reach the sky through wrinkles and individual chips on unrefined trunks, through freedom and space between the trees. They do not grow well. Each of them has its own place. This characteristic feature of the oak forest was subtly noticed by the artist and transferred to the canvas.
The sun fills the image and creates a carefree and cloudless mood. Its glare and spots playing on the grass and trunks create a contrast with the shadows in the depths of the grove and give it a true life. “Oak Grove” is a masterpiece of I. I. Shishkin, one of the peaks of his work. This concludes the description of Shishkin's picture “Oak Grove”.