The Clearing

By 1878 Ivan Shishkin was the painter Russians trusted to show them their own forests. That year he exhibited his famous field of ripe rye with the Wanderers, the group of realist artists who had left the academy to paint ordinary Russian country instead of myth and history. A forest edge like this one grows from the same ambition. Shishkin studied trees the way a botanist would, and viewers of his day liked to say they could name every species and grass in one of his pictures. He had trained abroad in Düsseldorf, then spent years drawing outdoors, filling sketchbook after sketchbook with bark, roots and undergrowth before a canvas like this was begun.