Wind-Fallen Trees

By 1888 Shishkin had spent decades painting the Russian forest as something solid and permanent, tall pines standing like columns. This canvas shows the opposite. A storm has torn through the woods and left them wrecked, heavy trunks snapped and thrown across one another, roots wrenched up into the air. He recorded it with the same patience he gave his calm forests, following each broken limb and the moss already climbing over the fallen wood. Nothing here is tidied up for effect. Russian has a single word for this kind of ruin left by wind, burelom, and that is the painting's title. Look into the tangle and you can pick out the small green shoots pushing up between the dead trees, the forest quietly beginning again on its own.