Off the coast of the Gulf of Finland (Udrias near Narva). Study

Ivan Shishkin was the great Russian master of the forest landscape, and this 1888 coastal study at Udrias near Narva on the Gulf of Finland is an unusual departure from his more famous forest interiors — one of his rare engagements with a coastal subject. The rocky, pine-fringed shores of the eastern Gulf of Finland offered him the intersection of his two great subjects: the northern forest and the sea. Shishkin painted studies throughout his career as a way of fixing direct natural observation, and this Gulf of Finland study has the freshness and specificity of direct outdoor painting.

Shishkin renders the rocky Baltic coastline with his characteristic attention to geological and botanical specifics. The study format allows a looser handling than his finished paintings — the pine trees sketched against the sky with confident, direct marks, the rocky foreground built with broader strokes. The Baltic light is cool and clear.