Ivan Shishkin's Twilight is the star lot of MacDougall's Russian Art auction, which will be held on June 5 amid London's Russian Art Week.
 Shishkin specialised in rendering natural phenomena, with this a fantastic example from his late period, just two years before his death |
The masterpiece is expected to realise £1.2m-1.8m ($1.8m-2.7m) as the highest valued lot of the auction.
Twilight was first exhibited at the 1896 All-Russia Exhibition, where the catalogue marks it as sold.
Few art enthusiasts have seen the work up close, as it has remained in a private Finnish collection from its original purchase until 2006.
Shishkin (1832-1898) worked predominantly in landscape, and frequently turned to the subject of the pine forest, having grown up in a rural area of Russia.
His work is characterised by a passion for rendering natural phenomena, with Twilight showing the sunset reflected in the puddle caused by the tracks.
Shishkin was closely associated with the Peredvizhniki movement, better known in English as the Wanderers or the Itinerants. This was a group of Russian realist artists, who formed an artistic cooperative in protest at academic restrictions at the time.
Bringing the auction's second highest bids will be Alexei Bogoliubov's View of the Venetian Lagoon from the Public Gardens, an 1870s work that recalls the better-known work of Ivan Aivazovsky.
Another breathtaking landscape, it is valued at £400,000-600,000 ($608,220-912,330).
At Christie's on June 3, a recently rediscovered still life by Ilya Mashkov will auction for £1.5m ($2.3m).
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