1872

Completes the picture Pine Forest in Viatka Province. March 12: is awarded first prize for this work in the competition organized by the Society for the Encouragement of Artists. December - February 1873: takes part in the second Itinerant exhibition (Shishkin's works were shown at all subsequent exhibitions of the Society). Summer: resides at Serebrianka near Luga (a town in St. Petersburg province) together with Kramskoi and Konstantin Savitsky, an Itinerant genre-painter and Shishkin's closest friend. Paints the pictures Backwoods and Midday. The Coppice. Takes part in the Academy of Arts exhibition. Kramskoi in a letter to Vasilyev notes Shishkin's immense creative progress.

Shishkin (seated, sixth from right) with members of the Society for Circulating Art Exhibitions. Photograph. 1888