Russian countryside is some of the world’s most lovely, from the celebrated explosions ofwildflowers that fill its forests in the spring, to the icy winter tundra that defeated the advances of Napoleon and Hitler and provided the backdrop for the drama of many of Russianliterature’s celebrated scenes. No one immortalised it better than Ivan Shishkin (1832-1898), thelandscape painter who captured the poetry and majesty of the Russian countryside in a non-replicableway. In this comprehensive work of scholarship, Irina Shuvalova and Victoria Charles make a thorough examination of Shishkin’s work.