The landscapes of Ivan Shishkin (Russian, 1832-1898) are notable for their truth to nature. He knew a lot about botany and painted outdoors on a regular basis. This autumn landscape in oil is about 16 x 26 inches.
1. The sky must have been dry or nearly dry from a previous session, rather than painted all wet together. If it was previously painted, it then have been "oiled out" with a very thin layer of painting medium to make it receptive.
2. He must have had a wide variety of brushes, and switched between them as he built up the foliage and branch textures. A big old, splayed brush, dabbed against the canvas, could have provided the foliage textures.
3. The branches are painted with a very thin round brush, and some of the lighter branches in the lower right of this detail seem to be scraped out of the wet paint with a knife or a brush.
4. The foreground leaf masses are laid on quite thickly. The full effect is loose and direct, but not "brushy"—that is, it doesn't look like a collection of brushstrokes.
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The Shishkin painting is Lot #1 in an upcoming Sotheby's sale of Russian pictures in London on June 2.
4 comments:
Nice analysis of Shiskin's technique Mr. Gurney, your blog is the best out there!
interesting view from a practitioner. Love your blog.
Excellent and very helful analysis James. I wonder how much editing he did - if any at all - in translating what he saw to canvas. It would be great to be able to compare the scene he saw to what he painted. What I mean is, a group of vegetation like that, in life, seems like such a jungle and tangle that some degree of editing seems to be required. Though maybe not. His painting is extremely convincing as a real place, in real light at a real time.
...amending what I just wrote. Of course there's always some editing. Leaves, for example, would be generalized clusters. I just wonder how much he did here of the larger elements - branches, for example.
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