“In the Wild North”
“In the Wild North” is an oil on canvas painting by the Russian artist, Ivan Shishkin, from 1891. Shishkin was part of the Peredvizhniki movement, which was the Russian counterpart of the Realism movement happening in France at the same time.
This brilliant landscape was created as an illustration for the poem “The Pine Tree” by the Russian Romantic poet, Mikhail Yurievich Lermontov. It was written in 1841, the same year of the poet’s death. It reads:
In the wild north a pine tree stands alone
On the bare top of a mountain.
It slumbers and sways, covered with
Powdery snow like a mantle.
And it dreams constantly: that in faraway wilds
In the land where the sun rises,
A cheerless and lovely palm stands alone,
Growing on a gloomy cliff.
Shishkin is known for his landscapes of Russia. He was often labeled the “singer of the Russian woods”. He spent his childhood in the old forests of Russia and developed a lifelong love of the trees. He was particularly fond of pine and oak trees.
In his adult years, Ivan Shishkin spent a lot of his time at his second home in the rural area of Vyra south of Saint Petersburg. Many of his landscape paintings were based on the setting in this area.
As Shishkin was a realist, he simply recreated the beauty that he saw without trying to add his own narrative. In fact, his paintings were almost portraits of the trees themselves. He spent a lot of time capturing every minute detail of the landscapes in a photorealistic way. Much of that is due to his deftness at using chiaroscuro, the shadows and light in his paintings. Chiaroscuro is a technique first developed by Leonardo da Vinci, and obviously mastered by Shishkin.
“In the Wild North”, in particular, appears to be a portrait painting of a tree. Shishkin often cut the tops of the trees off, adding a strength and immensity to his old forests. But in this lovely piece, we get the full view of the majestic tree.
“In the Wild North” is currently in the collections of the National Art Museum of Ukraine, Kyiv, Ukraine.
For more on Ivan Shishkin, please visit his short biography here.
You can find more artists to learn about here.
