Spring in Pavlovsk

The painting centers on a young woman shown from the waist up, her head crowned by a woven bird's nest occupied by several blue tits, while another perches on her outstretched sleeve and a bullfinch sits on her other arm. She wears a floral-patterned white dress with maroon sleeves, arms spread wide over reddish shrubbery in the foreground. Behind her stretches a snow-covered park with bare trees tinged pink, a stone bridge over a frozen canal, and a domed pavilion on rising ground.

Soft pinks, creams and browns dominate throughout, the winter landscape rendered in pale, muted tones that set off the woman's warmer coloring and the birds' yellow-green and blue-grey plumage. Forms are simplified and flatly patterned, with linear branch work and stippled texture standing in for naturalistic detail. The wintry setting combined with the nest-like headdress full of birds gives the image a quiet, fable-like tenderness.