Landscape with a Lake

Ivan Shishkin knew Russian forests better than most foresters. His pine woods, oak groves and rye fields are painted with a botanical precision that separates him from every other landscape painter of his generation, and he drew constantly from nature before committing anything to canvas. He trained in Moscow and St Petersburg, spent time in Germany and Switzerland, then returned and joined the Peredvizhniki, the Wanderers, who broke from the academy to take Russian art to provincial audiences. Their nationalism suited his subjects. Nothing in Shishkin’s work is imported. Morning in a Pine Forest, with its bear cubs, became so widely reproduced in Russia that it appears on sweet wrappers. The cubs were painted by a collaborator, Konstantin Savitsky, whose signature was later removed by a dealer. The forest, which is the real subject, is entirely Shishkin.