"Three Bears" - a picture so named in common people, it has an official name - "Morning in a pine forest." The canvas is painted in oil in 1889, its dimensions are 139 x 213 (rather large), it is stored in the State Tretyakov Gallery. The signature on the picture is only Ivan Shishkin.
The most replicated picture
The official name is more consistent with the picture itself, as there are four bears on the canvas, not three. But there is no person in the CIS who does not know this work, and it is under the name “Three Bears”. The picture is incredibly popular, it can be argued that, in modern terms, this is the most hyped picture. This was facilitated by candy wrappers of the most bought and tasty sweets in Soviet times, tablecloths, bedspreads and wall mats repeating the plot. And it is the bears, depicted in the foreground, in the general population who enjoy fame, and the beautifully depicted morning forest serves as a backdrop.
Not very successful co-authorship
And the bear was painted by another artist - Konstantin Apollonovich Savitsky (1844 - 1905), a genre painter, academician, friend of Shishkin. Savitsky convinced Shishkin that the picture lacked dynamics, and the animals in the foreground make up for the shortcoming. Art critics write that the bears did not succeed in Shishkin, and Savitsky - on the contrary. And, indeed, the clubfoot turned out so well that, by mutual agreement, the friends put their signatures under the picture. But Tretyakov and Savitsky at that time had some kind of friction, and, buying a picture for his gallery, he demanded to remove Savitsky's signature. Obviously, the desire of the collector was law, and only Shishkin’s signature remained, and he received the fee alone and probably didn’t share it with the co-author, because they stopped being friends.
Pine tree island
This is the wrong side of the Three Bears canvas. The picture is so beautiful, calm, gracious. Of course, Tretyakov was a connoisseur and a fine connoisseur of painting, and the forest, depicted by an unsurpassed master, was of true value to the buyer, and the bears did not even like it. Yes, and experts are delighted with the landscape that was spotted by Shishkin on Gorodomlya Island (Lake Seliger), brilliantly transferred to the canvas.
Known by the people as "Three Bears", the picture really perfectly conveys the state of nature. At first glance, it is clear that this is exactly the morning. The fog pierced by the rays of the rising sun is amazingly depicted.
Queen of landscapes
A brilliant landscape painter, in love with Russian nature, Shishkin very often painted pine trees. Different, at any time of the year, lit by the sun and covered with snow, they are beautiful.
The smallest needles are visible on his canvases, the roughness of the bark is felt, it seems that the pine smell comes from the paintings of Ivan Ivanovich. “Three Bears” - a
picture of Shishkin, depicting the wilderness of boron. It seems that you can hear the crackling trunks of centuries-old pine trees, but how the depth of the cliff located behind the right teddy bear is felt. And the infinity of the forest is depicted brilliantly. And the fog, around the edges is still blue, in the center already lit by the sun. And the little bear, drawn on the right, seems to have admired a beautiful morning. And nature has not quite woken up, and it blows in the cool of the morning. A brilliant work, a masterpiece. Maybe he didn’t need dynamics.
The result is complete harmony
In fairness, I must say that the bears do not spoil the canvas, they fit very well into it. The painting “Three Bears”, the description of which was given above, is very organic, and it is impossible to imagine it without these good-natured representatives of the wild. Perhaps the complacency emanating from a mother bear with three cubs is due to a lack of human proximity. And this peace of animals also emphasizes the depth of the thicket of the forest. “... And fresh moss under their paws will be accepted, dry branches crack under the weight ...” - the poet’s wonderful words about the painting. Morning, silence, harmony in the plant and animal world, in nature in general - the picture has a very soothing effect: "... I will only look at this beauty, and I know that it will Save, Warm!"