Forest in the evening

Shishkin painted this canvas in 1868 or 1869, and the museum on the Volga in Rybinsk that owns it gives both years. The sun has already gone down behind the trees. What light is left shows through the trunks as an orange band low on the horizon, and the clearing in front sinks into shadow. Felled logs lie on the left, a massive old trunk rises just right of centre, and along the rutted track walks a little girl in a pale headscarf, the only person in the wood.

The picture later belonged to Grenstrand, a St Petersburg merchant of the first guild, the highest rank of Russian merchants, who ran a forwarding business, lived on Nevsky Prospect and collected paintings. He was born in 1856, so the canvas reached him long after it was painted. Between 2012 and 2014, for Shishkin's 180th anniversary, it was lent to exhibitions in Yaroslavl, Kostroma and Tver.