Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin was a Russian landscape artist strongly connected with the Peredvizhniki movement. His paintings are famous for lyrical representation of woods and nature. The masterpieces of this outstanding artist benefit from enormous fame in Russia; the most excellent of them have become the classics. During four decades of his artistic career Shishkin created thousands of paintings, studies and drawings and a huge number of engravings. For his contemporaries, he personified Russian nature and they named him “Tzar of Forest” or “Lonesome Oak”.

Shichkin twice married and twice his wives died, his sons also died, but he never let his sorrows come into view on his paintings. He died in his studio at the easel with newly begun canvas.