IVAN IVANOVICH SHISHKIN | Pine Tree

Acquired by the mother of the present owner in Moscow in the 1940s

The pine tree was one of Shishkin’s favourite subjects and he returned to it time and time again in his plein-air studies. Throughout his career he never stopped making studies from life; observing nature in all her different states and honing and refining his skill, for he regarded his studies as works of art in their own right, not mere aide-memoires. Ivan Kramskoi, the ideological leader of the Itinerant artists and one of Shishkin’s closest friends said of the artist’s studies in 1872 ‘Shishkin simply amazes us by his ability, doing two or three studies in a day, and such complex ones too… Out there, face to face with nature, he is in his element, he is bold and clever and unhesitant: out there he knows everything… he is by himself a school’.