Pine forest

This Pine Forest adorned the billiard room of Nicholas II. How did the painting get to the Far East? To answer this question, recall the post-revolutionary period. The owners of palaces, estates, and the richest collections left everything and emigrated abroad. Valuable art objects were seized and taken to Moscow and Petrograd. After some time, the storage facilities of the museums were pretty full. It was decided to replenish the collections of provincial museums. This is how a lot of significant paintings, including Shishkin’s Pine Forest, got into the Khabarovsk Museum.

The artist’s hand is recognized at first sight: we face a typical Shishkin monumental landscape, century-old pines he loved so much, they seem to hold the sky at their tops. The characteristic rather restrained colouring and the masterly possession of the chiaroscuro techniques evidence about the authorship of Shishkin. The picture shows a fine, most likely summer day; however, such weather causes coolness and humidity in the pine forest reign: the puddle in the foreground has not dried up and enhances the feeling of the thick air filled with pine aromas.

Written by Aliona Grosheva