In order to gain inspiration and create paintings devoted to the past, Borisov Musatov would often visit old estates. One of his favourite estates was Zubrilovka near Saratov, a park and garden ensemble that belonged to the Golitsyn-Prozorovsky princes. The manor had started deteriorating, and he was drawn to the neglected garden in the manor. During one of his visits, he wandered deep into the garden where he found a semicircular marble pond, along with a staircase that led into the depths of the reservoir. Borisov Musatov took a photograph of this secluded place, which serves as the background for the painting, 'The Pool". In this photo, his favourite models posed for him: his sister Elena (standing) and his bride, Elena Alexandrova.
Similar to most Symbolist paintings, no action takes place in the painting, and all movement has stopped. Shades of white, blue and lilac are found throughout the painting. His work synthesises two different themes, with Borisov-Musatov combining specific features of decorative art and easel art together. The painting uses two different perspectives – the viewer looks at the reservoir from above; therefore, they cannot see the sky but only its reflection in the pond. This allows us to look at the world reflected through the artist's soul.
The viewer looks at the two women from below, with the woman standing at a complex angle. Borisov Musatov used this unusual composition structure to convey a generalised world, which was a world full of memories.
The painting has a musical rhythm to it, built on repetitions and alternating circular rhythms. Upon taking a closer look at the rounded line of the reservoir, it is seen that it flows into the same curved line of the sitting lady's crinoline. The figures in the painting are generalised, representing two triangles with an interval formed between them, adding to the depth and taking the spotlight as the main focus of view against the depth of the pond.
Borisov Musatov refrained from using bright light fragments for his paintings, just like this one. The way the clouds are drawn in the reflections, the rocks seem to be light and fluffy, appearing to have no weight at all. The openwork, transparent clothes of the sitting lady resemble flowers and clouds, acting as some form of convergence of dreams and memories.
Painted at his family’s estate in Zubrilovka, "The Pool" entirely defies traditional landscape painting as Borisov-Musatov radically clips the horizon line, trapping the viewer inside a hypnotic, reflection-heavy world where the sky and towering trees belong solely to the water. The women wear out-of-time, mid-19th-century crinoline dresses, anchoring them not in real life, but in a nostalgic, melancholic fantasy of a fading noble past. Historically, this composition marks a critical evolutionary bridge in Russian art. By combining French Impressionist brushwork and Post-Impressionist flat colour zones with a deeply Russian soulfulness (toska), Borisov-Musatov pioneered a new decorative-symbolist language. This specific piece served as a guiding catalyst for the Blue Rose art movement, fundamentally steering the pre-revolutionary Russian avant-garde away from social realism and toward pure spiritual abstraction.
