Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin

(1832-1898)

Corn-Field

     A Corn-Filed is one of the best-known paintings by Shishkin, a famous Russian landscape painter. It depicts a boundless field of ripening rye. The full ears are bending to the ground under the weight of mellowed grain. Mighty pines are towering proudly over the field and above this wide expanse of Russian land there is a blue sky with clouds, the heralds of a refreshing rain, gathering on the horizon.

     Everything in this painting is permeated with a desire to tell of an abundant harvest and of the inexhaustible wealth and beauty of the Russian land.

     In pictures painted in the eighties and nineties, Shishkin paid a great deal of attention to light and air, preserving at the same time the materiality of his subject and its precise form.