Branches. A Study

Close studies of branches and foliage occupied Shishkin throughout his career, and this Komi National Gallery study represents a systematic aspect of his practice. To render a tree convincingly in a landscape, he believed it was necessary to have painted the specific structure of its branches and the exact texture and colour of its leaves many times at close range. 'Branches — A Study' therefore names both the subject and the method: it is a direct observation of natural form undertaken for its own sake and in the service of a larger understanding of how things look. Such studies circulated among his students at the St Petersburg Academy as exemplary models.

Close focus on branch structure reveals Shishkin's almost scientific approach to foliage. Individual leaves and their attachment points are rendered with careful specificity, and the way light penetrates or is blocked by different densities of leaf mass is observed with the same precision he would apply to a finished exhibition canvas.