The Path in the Forest

In November 1880 St Petersburg was queuing on Bolshaya Morskaya Street to see a single painting. Arkhip Kuindzhi, a landscape painter of Shishkin's own generation, had hung his Moonlit Night on the Dnieper alone in a darkened room, and the crowds came for the effect of the light. Shishkin spent the same year on work like this. The canvas is small, 59 by 48 centimetres. A path runs back into the trees with figures walking along it in plain afternoon sun, and two straight pine trunks stand at either side holding the whole thing steady. The rest is the close, almost botanical detail he was known for, down to the undergrowth at the edge of the track. It hangs today in Hall 27 of the Mikhailovsky Palace in St Petersburg.