(Jelabuga 1832–1898 St. Petersburg) A Country Road, signed in Cyrillic script and dated I. Shishkin 1886, oil on canvas, 59.7 x 109.2 cm, framed, (Rei)

Provenance: Antiquarian book shop, Riga; Private property, Southern Germany; Christie’s London, Russian Sale, 29th November 2006, lot 60. The painting demonstrates great similarity to Schischkin‘s works of the 1880’s. Schischkin painted his large and consummate compositions only after he had completed many preliminary landscape studies during the course of the summer months. They in no way resembled a photographic document, rather they enhanced the particular characteristics of the region. Schischkin spent the summer of 1886 in Sestrorezk near St. Petersburg, which suggests that the picture depicts the hilly surroundings of Sestrorezk. The painting certainly demonstrates the technical peculiarities of Schischkin‘s painting: the fine-grained canvas, the preparatory drawings with graphite pencil and the brownish underpainting. (Cf. literature p. 68-74) . It also shows the special multiplicity of the surface layering which was characteristic of Schischkin‘s work at this time. The picture was restored in 2006 on behalf of Christies. The findings of the technical research are available on request. We are grateful to Dr Olga Sugrobova for her assistance in cataloguing this work.