Winter

Winter, painted in 1894 and held in the Tretyakov Gallery, belongs to the same productive year as the Northern Lights canvas, demonstrating Korovin's engagement with the full range of seasonal light effects available in the Russian climate. Painting winter subjects — snow, cold light, leafless trees — was a significant strand within the Russian naturalist and Impressionist tradition, with artists from Savrasov to Levitan having produced canonical winter landscapes. Korovin brought to the subject the Impressionist sensitivity to transient atmospheric effects that his training and French exposure had developed: the blue shadows on snow, the particular quality of overcast winter light, the way bare branches subdivide the sky. The Tretyakov, which held the Northern Lights from the same year, collected Winter as a complementary demonstration of Korovin's range across seasonal and geographic extremes.

Snow is among the most technically demanding subjects for a colorist: its apparent whiteness is in reality densely populated with colored shadows, reflections, and atmospheric tints. Korovin uses cool blues, lavenders, and muted greens in the shadow areas, keeping the lit snow surfaces relatively neutral but never purely white. The brushwork in the snow passages is broader and more gestural than in his summer works.