Ivan Shishkin's Twilight has sold for a new artist world record as part of MacDougall's Russian Art auction, which is ongoing in London.
 Shishkin specialised in rendering natural phenomenon, with this example created just two years before his death |
The sale comes amid Russian Art Week, in which the UK capital welcomes a host of high-profile sales from top auction houses.
Shishkin's Twilight is considered a masterpiece in the artist's oeuvre and one of the finest of his late period. It sold for £2.2m ($3.3m), just above its top estimate.
The painting was first exhibited in 1896 at the All-Russia Exhibition, with the catalogue for the event marking it as sold.
Since its original sale, it has remained in a private Finnish collection, meaning that very few collectors or scholars have seen it up close.
Shishkin (1832-1898) was one of Russia's foremost pre-revolution artists, working predominantly in the landscape format.
He is often associated with the Wanderers movement, formed by a group of Russian realists in protest against academic restrictions imposed by the country's Imperial Academy of Arts.
Also featuring in the sale was Alexei Bogoliubov's View of the Venetian Lagoon from the Public Gardens, which sold for $380,000. Executed in the 1870s, the piece reflects the better known work of Ivan Aivazovsky, who greatly influenced Bogoliubov in his formative years.
Also selling amid Russian Art Week was Ilya Mashkov's Still Life with Fruit, which made £4.7m ($7.3m) at Christie's on Monday.
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