Stream in a Birch Forest 1883 105h153 Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin (1832-1898)

Description of Ivan Shishkin’s painting "Stream in a birch forest".

We know the artist Ivan Shishkin mainly for his remarkable forest landscapes. While still an apprentice, Ivan diligently painted etudes from life on Valaam and in the suburbs of St. Petersburg. The direction of painting he chose in his youth became his calling card for many years. He is considered the strongest painter among Russian landscape painters. Perhaps no one as carefully as he painted individual trees, small bushes, and even grass in his paintings. Thanks to this style of painting the accuracy of the image of landscapes in the paintings of Shishkin actually reaches photographic.

The picture of the brook in the birch forest depicts a rather rare for the artist genre scene - of course, again in the forest scenery. Two female figures move away from the viewer along the forest path that runs along the brook overgrown with green mud. Tall birches that reach straight into the sky silently stand on either side of the stream, like sentinels.

Every tree in the painting is unique, as always with Shishkin, each of them has its own inimitable natural curves. The painting is saturated with sunlight; it penetrates through the branches and warms up the green grass, the trampled road, and the travelers. The highlights of the sun on the white birch trunks are the brightest spots in the picture; on the whole, its coloring is rather dark, which creates a feeling of solitude and protection.

A wooden bridge crosses the brook and connects the two banks; the greenish water is masterly depicted and the reflections of the trees in it seem real. Far ahead, the trees part and the viewer can finally see a sunlit clearing. Obviously, this is where the girls are going; the symbolic path to the light through the shadows is the driving motif of the painting.