Forêt d'épicéas

In 1891 Shishkin did something painters of his generation mostly kept to themselves. He put several hundred of his own studies on public show in St Petersburg, the oil notes made standing in front of the trees and normally kept in the studio as working material. He was 59 and the best-known forest painter in Russia. This spruce study was among the things seen there, painted in 1889 or 1890, with the tops of the firs cut off by the upper edge of the canvas so that the eye stays down among the trunks. Pavel Tretyakov bought it, and it carries inventory number 853 in the Moscow gallery he had spent 30 years assembling.