Ivan Shishkin was a popular, 19th-century, Russian landscape painter whose prolificity and talent earned him the nickname “tsar of the woods.” He was educated in Russian art schools and, although he traveled extensively to Switzerland and Germany, he eventually returned to Russia where he was a highly valued professor at numerous Russian art academies. Shishkin valued accurate depictions of the natural landscape, resulting in his photo-like canvases. He did, however, believe in embellishing nature with a personal style, which was, in his case, an epic intensity that used intense color or exaggerated mass to emphasize the overwhelming awesomeness of nature.