Birkenhain

When Kuindzhi showed this at the Wanderers' exhibition in 1879, crowds came for one thing: the light. He had built a reputation as a painter who could make a canvas seem to glow, and here he pushes it hard, a clearing of birch trunks lit so brightly the grass reads as almost flat, saturated green while the far trees sink into shade. He cut away detail to get the sun. Pavel Tretyakov, the Moscow merchant then building the collection that became the national gallery, bought it on the spot. It was the last Wanderers show Kuindzhi ever took part in. Soon after, at the peak of his fame, he stopped exhibiting in public for close to 20 years.