In Krippen. The man on the Doorstep

In 1862 Shishkin went abroad for the first time, on the travelling allowance the Academy of Arts in St Petersburg gave its gold medallists. Germany came first. He worked for a while in Munich, then walked in Saxon Switzerland, the sandstone country along the Elbe upstream from Dresden, where Krippen sits as a row of houses under the cliffs.

What he brought back from that stop is a house wall, a doorway and a man resting on the step, seen close up. The rocks that drew every other visiting artist stay outside the frame.

He was 30, and the pine forests that made his name were still years off. The painting hangs in Kazan, about 200 kilometres from Yelabuga, the town on the Kama where he was born.