Lumbering

Shishkin painted this in 1867, and the Tretyakov Gallery treats it as the canvas where his own way of seeing the northern forest first came together in one large picture. It is big, about 125 by 196 centimetres, and it sets you at the edge of a working clearing. A huge pine that stood here until recently lies on the ground, already sawn into sections, the cut ends still pale and fresh. The woodcutters are tiny beside it, off to the right where a thread of smoke rises between the trunks. Around them the forest carries on with its own business, ferns and grass, roots torn out of the churned earth, the red caps of fly agarics. The tree at the centre of the composition came from life. Shishkin had drawn it the same year in a separate study, Forest Thicket, which also hangs in the Tretyakov. Pavel Tretyakov bought the finished canvas directly from the painter.