Pluie dans une forêt de chênes

Ivan Shishkin was Russia's great painter of the forest, famous for rendering bark, needle and leaf with almost botanical exactness, usually under clear and even light. This canvas from 1891 is a quieter experiment: warm summer rain drifting through an oak grove, the far trees dissolving into a silver haze, a couple strolling under one umbrella along the wet path. The rain is never shown falling. You read it instead from the puddles pocked with drops, the sheen on the road, the softened far light. Shishkin was in his late fifties and at the height of his reputation. Against the two small figures on the path, the old oaks stand up enormous.