森林远景

Shishkin sent this to the 12th exhibition of the Peredvizhniki, the Russian painters' travelling society, which opened in 1884 and then went round the provinces as all their shows did. Most of his forests are painted from inside, close enough to read the bark of a single trunk. Here he stands above them. The canvas is wide, a little over 160 centimetres, and the woods run back ridge behind ridge, going blue with haze, with a small sheet of water catching the light in the middle distance. He was 52 that year, and had been showing with the society since its first exhibition in 1871.