A Pine Forest. Mast-Timber forest in Viatka Province

Mast timber was a commercial grade before it was a title. It meant pines grown tall and straight enough to be cut for ship masts, and the stands in Vyatka province were worked and floated down the Kama. Shishkin grew up on that river, in Yelabuga, and went back there in 1871 to draw. The picture he made the following year went into a competition run by the Society for the Encouragement of Artists in St Petersburg and took first prize. Ivan Kramskoi, a painter close to him, had lent him a studio to work in. Pavel Tretyakov bought the canvas for his Moscow collection, and in 1878 it travelled to the World's Fair in Paris. Kramskoi's own verdict was that the thing looked healthy and robust, and that audiences were struck more by the drawing in it than by the painting.