Birds (Decorative panel made for the pavilion of Russian outskirts at the World Exhibition in Paris 1900 for the Siberian department)

This decorative panel depicting birds was created in 1899 as part of a major commission for the 1900 Paris World Exhibition (Exposition Universelle), where Russia presented a pavilion celebrating its regional diversity through themed sections. Korovin was the principal artist responsible for the design and decoration of the Russian Outskirts pavilion, which included the Siberian department. This major commission came through his relationship with Savva Mamontov and placed him at the center of Russia's most significant cultural diplomacy project of the era. The decorative panels Korovin produced for the pavilion combined his fine-art painterly skill with the applied arts sensibility he had developed through theatrical design — an integration typical of the Russian Art Nouveau movement. The Russian Museum holds the work, and it represents the intersection of Korovin's dual careers as a pure painter and as a decorator of monumental spaces.

A decorative panel intended for architectural installation required different principles than an easel painting: strong silhouette, clear color areas readable from a distance, and integration with surrounding decorative elements. Korovin would have worked larger and with a bolder, more simplified approach than his intimate plein-air canvases, while applying his characteristic colorist sensibility to the decorative purpose.