Ivan Shishkin

Painter, draughtsman, engraver. Studied at the First Grammar School for Boys in Kazan (1844–48), but dropped out to try and become an artist (1848–52). Studied under Carl Wilhelm von Rabus and Apollon Mokritsky at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture (1852–56) and under Alexei Markov and Sokrat Vorobyov at the Imperial Academy of Arts (1856-60). Awarded major gold medals and a foreign fellowship (1860). Worked in his native Yelabuga (1861) and travelled to Germany and Switzerland (1862–65). Trained in the studio of Rudolf Koller in Zurich (1863), painted studies in the Teutoburg Forest (1864) and lived in Düsseldorf (1864–65). Academician of landscape painting (1865), professor (1873), full member of the Imperial Academy of Arts (1893). Visited Balaam with his student Fyodor Vasilyev (1867) and married Fyodor’s sister Yevgenia (1868). Suffered from depression and alcoholism following the death of his wife (1874) and his sons Vladimir (1873) and Konstantin (1875). Married his student Olga Lagoda (1880), who died shortly after giving birth to his daughter Xenia (1881), who later married Baron Nikolai von Riedinger against her father’s will and founded the Finnish seaside resort of Kuokkala and Ilya Repin’s estate of Penates. Founding member of the Society of Travelling Art Exhibitions (1870–98) and the Society of Russian Watercolourists (1880). Headed the landscape studio at the Imperial Academy of Arts (1894–95, 1897–98). Died while working on a painting in Moscow and buried at the St Alexander Nevsky Monastery in St Petersburg (1898). Contributed to the exhibitions of the Imperial Academy of Arts, Society of Travelling Art Exhibitions, Moscow Society of Lovers of the Arts, Society for the Encouragement of Artists, Pan-Russian Exhibitions in Moscow (1882) and Nizhny Novgorod (1896), World Exhibitions in Paris (1867, 1878), London (1872) and Vienna (1873) and one-man shows (1891, 1893).