황량한 북녘에서…

In 1891 Russia marked 50 years since the poet Lermontov was killed in a duel, and a memorial edition of his work was being prepared. Shishkin, the painter everyone knew for vast sunlit forests, was asked to illustrate one short poem, a few lines about a single pine standing alone on a bare northern crag, asleep under the snow and dreaming of a distant palm in a warm land. He turned it into this: one tree, isolated on a rock, its branches bowed under a heavy white load, lit by cold moonlight over a drop into darkness. There is none of his usual green abundance here. The picture went to a collection in Kyiv, where it still hangs.