The narration is carried out alternately on behalf of two artists - Dedov and Ryabinin, who contrasted with each other.

Grandfather, a young engineer, having received a small inheritance, leaves the service to devote himself entirely to painting.

He works hard, writes and paints landscapes and is completely happy if he manages to capture the spectacular play of light in the picture. Who and why will need the landscape painted by him - he does not ask himself such a question.

Companion Dedova at the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts Ryabinin, on the contrary, is constantly tormented by the question, does anyone need his painting, and indeed art?

Dedov and Ryabinin often return together after classes at the academy. Their path lies past the pier, cluttered with parts of various metal structures and mechanisms, and Grandfather often explains their purpose to a friend. Somehow he draws Ryabinin's attention to a huge cauldron with a split seam. Talk goes on how to fix it. Grandfather explains how rivets are made: a person sits in a cauldron and holds the rivet from the inside with pliers, pushing it with his chest, and from the outside that there is strength, the master pounds the rivet with a hammer. “After all, it's like beating on the chest,” Ryabinin worries. “Anyway,” Dedov agrees, explaining that these workers quickly die out (for which they are nicknamed the grouse), do not live long and receive pennies, because “neither skill nor art is required for this work”.

Ryabinin asks Dedov to show him such a capercaillie. Grandfather agrees to take him to the factory, leads him to the boiler room, and Ryabinin himself gets into a huge boiler to see how the wood grouse works. He crawls out from there completely pale.

A few days later he decides to write a capercaillie. The grandfathers of the friend does not approve of the decision - why multiply the ugly?

Ryabinin, meanwhile, is working frantically. The closer to the end the picture moves, the more terrible it seems to the artist what he created. A haggard man crouching in the corner of the cauldron painfully affects Ryabinin. Will he have the same effect on the public? “Kill their calm, as you killed mine,” the artist conjures his creation.

Finally, a picture of Ryabinin is exhibited and bought. According to the tradition that lives among artists, Ryabinin must arrange a feast for his comrades. Everyone congratulates him on the success. He seems to have a bright future ahead. Soon - the end of the academy, he is an indisputable candidate for a gold medal, which gives the right to four-year improvement abroad.

At night after the feast, Ryabinin becomes ill. In delirium, it seems to him that he is again at the factory where he saw the capercaillie, that he himself is something like a capercaillie and all his friends beat him with hammers, sticks, fists, so that he physically feels a terrible blow fall on his skull .

Ryabinin faints. Lying without memory, he finds a landlady. Grandfather takes Ryabinin to the hospital and visits him. Ryabinin is gradually recovering. The medal is lost - Ryabinin did not have time to submit a competitive work. Grandfathers received his medal and sincerely sympathizes with Ryabinin - as a landscape painter, he did not compete with him. To the question of Dedov, whether Ryabinin intends to participate in the competition for next year, Ryabinin answers negatively.

Grandfather goes abroad - to improve in painting. Ryabinin throws the painting and enters the teacher's seminary.