Catherine II during a walk in the Tsarskosyelsky Park

Borovikovsky's 1794 depiction of Catherine the Great walking in Tsarskoe Selo Park is one of the most celebrated and unconventional imperial portraits in Russian art. Rather than showing the empress in full regalia on a ceremonial throne, Borovikovsky depicted her as an elderly woman in a morning gown and cap, accompanied by her dog, strolling informally through the park she loved. The painting drew on a Sentimentalist ideal of the ruler as private person and reflected Catherine's own cultivation of a domestic self-image — she reportedly admired the painting precisely for its informality. The Tretyakov Gallery holds the work as a masterpiece of late eighteenth-century Russian portraiture that transformed the conventions of imperial representation.

The large canvas handles the outdoor setting with the atmospheric warmth of a real morning walk — soft sky, shaded paths, a gentle light that makes no demands of ceremony. Catherine's figure is small within the landscape rather than dominating it, a deliberate formal choice that reinforces the anti-monumental conception. The painting of the dog and the softly rendered park architecture are among the most accomplished passages.