[two masters] millet and shishkin

Most know that Jean-François Millet was one of the founders of the Barbizon School, near la forêt de Fontainebleau.


Anyone who has been to Barbizon and walked in Fontainebleau Forest knows the effect that comes over him/her. It is a place which, in a short space of time, burnt itself so far into my soul that my second book, Lemmings, uses this as a recurrent theme which even brings Russians to the place.

If you can call any time in a novel "happy" then those moments in that forest could be called happy and that novel is happy.


Millet was noted for his naturalism and realism - these come out in his famous paintings of the forest and the one below - The Gleaners.

Here is another, celebrating the spring:


This biography of Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin is not going to be of much use to English speakers so Wiki might be better here. Shishkin was known for his magnificent use of light in his rural scenes and these prints show this to a certain extent. His house is open to the public in Yelabuga, Tatarstan and many of his paintings hang on the walls there.

This print above really must be viewed zoomed for best effect - please click.

Yelabuga is also know as the resting place of Anna Akhmatova. That top print [see zoomed] is just so like the Russia I know, even down to the puddles on the track in the forest that Shishkin might have been living in this time.