Shishkov, Matvei Andreevich

Born 1832 in Moscow; died June 15 (27), 1897, in La Seyne-sur-Mer, near Toulon. Russian stage designer.

Shishkov studied in the Stroganov School and under the stage designer Kh. Shen’ian in Moscow. He first worked under the direction of A. A. Roller in St. Petersburg in 1852. In 1869 he became an academician of the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts, and in 1884 he became a professor.

Shishkov introduced historical authenticity into Russian stage design by using details of everyday life; however, the productions he worked on were often excessively naturalistic and overburdened with props. Shishkov’s best designs were for A. K. Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan the Terrible (1867, Aleksandrinskii Theater, in collaboration with V. G. Shvarts and G. G. Gagarin) and Tchaikovsky’s Vakula the Smith (1877, Mariinskii Theater, in collaboration with M. I. Bocharov).