FRAGANCIAS MÁGICAS

Christa Zaat

Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin (Ива́н Ива́нович Ши́шкин) (Russian landscape painter) 1832 - 1898
Стога, Преображенское (Haystacks, Preobrazhenskoe), 1890
oil on canvas
70.5 × 93 cm. (27.8 × 36.6 in.)
signed in Cyrillic and indistinctly dated 1890 l.r. 
private collection

Catalogue Note

An indistinct Danish label on the reverse indicates that this work was purchased in London 'for 134 guineas (approximately £141 or 2500 Danish Kroner) from the estate of the deceased Grand Duke Sergius'. It possible that this was Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich (1857– 1905).
The image of haystacks inspired a small important group of works by Shishkin, from his very early Harvest painted in the 1850s, to his Ukrainian Mown Field, Polesya landscape (1884) and the etching, Field from 1886 (fig.1), all of which are in the State Tretyakov Gallery. The theme of the harvest itself inspired perhaps his most famous painting, Midday in the Outskirts of Moscow (1869), yet these harvest-themed paintings rarely appear at auction.
'The advent of the 1890s saw Shishkin at the peak of his powers (... ) In the last decade of his life Shishkin continued to work with enthusiasm on studies that to this day impress the viewer by their purity and sunlit radiance. Nor did he abandon landscape compositions. His large-format pictures are outstanding for their consummate craftsmanship, conceptual completeness and mature thought' (A. Savinov and A. Fyodorov-Davydov, Shishkin, Leningrad: Aurora Art, 1983). This sense of composition is very apparent in the offered lot, where the gentle curves are repeated throughout in the slope, haystacks, clouds and track.
Shishkin spent the spring of 1890 painting in Tver and over the summer produced a famous series of paintings in Finland. The offered lot was painted on his return to Russia, in Preobrazhenskoye, just east of Moscow, where he later worked on another sun-filled landscape, Grove by a Pond, Preobrazhenskoe (fig. 2) Such was Shishkin's fame at this stage of his career, that to mark forty years of his creative endeavour he was granted a personal exhibition at the Imperial Academy of Arts in November 1891, in order to showcase his studies, drawings and etchings.

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Shishkin was born in Yelabuga of Vyatka Governorate (today Republic of Tatarstan), and graduated from the Kazan gymnasium. Then he studied at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture for four years. After that, he attended the Saint Petersburg Imperial Academy of Arts from 1856 to 1860, and graduated with the highest honours and a gold medal. He received the imperial scholarship for his further studies in Europe. Five years later Shishkin became a member of the Imperial Academy in St. Petersburg and was professor of painting from 1873 to 1898. At the same time, Shishkin headed the landscape painting class at the Highest Art School in St. Petersburg.
For some time, Shishkin lived and worked in Switzerland and Germany on scholarship from the St. Petersburg Imperial Academy of Arts. On his return to Saint Petersburg, he became a member of the Circle of the Itinerants and of the Society of Russian Watercolorists. He also took part in exhibitions at the Academy of Arts, the All Russian Exhibition in Moscow (1882), the Nizhniy Novgorod (1896), and the World Fairs (Paris, 1867 and 1878, and Vienna, 1873). Shishkin's painting method was based on analytical studies of nature. He became famous for his forest landscapes, and was also an outstanding draftsman and a printmaker.
Ivan Shishkin owned a dacha in Vyra, south of St. Petersburg. There he painted some of his finest landscapes. His works are notable for poetic depiction of seasons in the woods, wild nature, animals and birds. He died in 1898, in St. Petersburg, Russia, while working on his new painting.
A minor planet 3558 Shishkin, discovered by Soviet astronomer Lyudmila Zhuravlyova in 1978 is named after him.