Ivan Shishkin

Born January 25, 1832, Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin emerged as a Russian Realist painter and draughtsman during the reign of Tsar Alexander II, when the empire's art world was beginning to crack open. He became one of the founding members of the Peredvizhniki, the wandering exhibitors who broke from the imperial academy to bring art directly to the people. Shishkin devoted himself almost exclusively to landscape, working as both painter and draughtsman to capture the Russian wilderness with an exactitude that bordered on scientific. He died March 20, 1898, leaving behind forests rendered so faithfu…