"Spring" (1901)

Viktor Borissov-Mussatov (1870-1905) spent his formative years in Paris working in the studio of the French symbolist painter Gustave Moreau. He was influenced not by Moreau's grotesques, however, but by the more lyrical and nostalgic paintings of Puvis de Chavannes. In all of Borissov-Mussatov's mature work we feel a kind of elegiac melancholy that harmonized perfectly with a certain strain of provincial symbolist thought. Borissov-Mussatov favored mysterious feminine figures whose poses suggested some kind of otherworldly concerns, as in this painting, entitled . His palate, filled with greens and blues is typically symbolist as well.