This is not a photograph. It’s called Oak Grove, and it was painted in 1887 by Ivan Shishkin. Every furrow of bark, every leaf, every blade of grass in the shade of these old oaks was put there by hand. Shishkin painted trees so faithfully that his canvases are less like pictures of a forest and more like portraits of the trees themselves, each one rendered down to its smallest detail. He spent his life wandering the woods near his home outside Saint Petersburg, studying nature so closely that Russia gave him a nickname: the singer of the Russian woods. What I love most is that these oaks feel so alive, you can almost feel the coolness of their shade on your skin. And like very old trees in real life, they make you feel small in the best way possible, as if they have seen everything and are telling you that it will all be alright...