Ivan Shishkin (and Konstantin Savitsky) · Morning in a pine forest

1886 – oil on canvas – Tetryakov Gallery, Russia

Ivan Shishkin (1832-1898) was one of the most important 19th century Russian landscape painters. He was a very famous artist in life, being a professor of painting in the Imperial Academy of Saint Petersburg and in the Higher Art School of Moscow.

“Morning in a pine forest” is a marvelous pictorial fantasy that goes beyond the pure realism developed by many other Russian painters of the era. Shishkin has chosen one of his favorite motifs, the dense Russian pine forest, adding the unusual and rather bucolic presence of a family of bears, which were painted by his colleague Konstantin Savitsky.