Pavel Dogadin bought this painting from the gallery of Pavel Saurov on Tverskoy Boulevard, Moscow. Acquisition of the Lady with a Spring Landscape by the Astrakhan collector was a hard-fought victory because the Tretyakov Gallery was also eager to have it in its collection.

Already in his time, Konstantin Somov was revered as a talented and to a great extent unique portrait painter. He created a variety of graphic and pictorial works of his contemporaries. His canvases depict not only their appearance but also character features and spirits.

The model who posed for Pavel Saurov was artist Elizaveta Martynova. She was also a fellow student of Konstantin Somov at the Academy of Arts. Martynova repeatedly posed for paintings of the Silver Age artists, for example, Philipp Malyavin and Osip Braz. In 1897, in the year when Lady with a Spring Landscape was created, Martynova was seriously ill with tuberculosis which was incurable at the end of the 19th century. The disease prevented implementation of her numerous creative plans. None of her artistic works has survived till nowadays.

In his painting Lady with a Spring Landscape, Elizaveta Martynova is portrayed by Konstantin Somov as a grieving girl. Her painfully pale face and a black gown with a mourning veil hint that the heroine is going through a tragedy. The girl’s sad appearance combines with a cold and joyless spring landscape reflecting her physical state and spirits.