Au large du golfe de Finlande (Udrias, près de Narva). Étude

Shishkin painted this outdoors on a strip of Baltic coast called Udrias, west of Narva. In 1888 that was the Estland province of the Russian Empire, within easy reach of Saint Petersburg, where he lived. The landform is what kept bringing him back, a high flat rock that breaks off in a cliff above a narrow band of sand. He made several studies of it that season, and the following year worked them up into a canvas nearly a metre and a half across. Both this study and that larger picture are in the Russian Museum. The shore itself is in Estonia now, a short way along the coast from the Russian border.