Sunny day. Merikul

Ivan Shishkin was the great painter of the Russian forest, famous above all for his pines, every needle and patch of bark set down with an almost botanical exactness. In the summer of 1894 he was not in the deep woods but on the coast, at Merikül, a small seaside village near Narva on the Gulf of Finland, in what is now Estonia. The shore there had become a favourite summer resort for people from Saint Petersburg, and painters followed. He made a few canvases that season. This one is after a plain, bright thing: ordinary daylight lying warm and even over the coast on a clear day.