Sometimes, I.I. Shishkin’s studies, while remaining a memorable impression of some motif that he liked, become self-contained art pieces as evidenced by the painting Corner of an Overgrown Garden. Goutweed. Art lovers know Shishkin as an author of epic landscapes, whose canvases usually feature powerful oaks, slender pines, impassable thickets. But the artist was also interested in grasses, mosses, ferns – everything that is called the “forest ground floor”. The world of nature is not divided into the small and the large, and the landscape painter, in love with it, could not overlook any of its details. In 1860, after graduating from the Academy of Arts with a large gold medal, Shishkin went for his scholarship trip not to Italy or France, but to Germany. It was in the Düsseldorf school of painting that he got a special love for the natural world. There are several goutweed studies painted in 1884 in Pargolovo on the outskirts of St. Petersburg, a place visited by many celebrities. Having painted thickets of tall, slender stems with white umbels and honey scent, the artist emphasises the significance of this unassuming motif. Despite being called a study, the picture has the expressiveness of a strong full-scale painting.
State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow