The painting depicts Anna Konstantinovna Chertkova, a children's writer and publicist, wife of the publisher and public figure Vladimir Grigoryevich Chertkov, a close friend of Leo Tolstoy.

A year before the painting was created, Anna Chertkova experienced a severe shock, as a result of the illness, which lasted only two days, her beloved two-year-old daughter died.

[2] The publicist and art critic Mikhail Nevedomsky described the image of the heroine in the painting as follows: "an intelligent sick lady, spending her last spring among the greenery and flowers of the fertile south: all wrapped up, she sits in an armchair on the terrace of a Crimean villa".

[Note 1][3] In another of his articles, he even wrote about the painting: "a young sick woman who came to die under the southern sun by the sea, among roses and plane trees".

[5] Vladimir Seklutsky, the founder and first director of the N. A. Yaroshenko Memorial Estate Museum, suggested that the woman is immersed in memories: she is half lying between the cushions with a plaid thrown over her knees, her eyes are pensive, they express the desire for life an Honored worker of culture of the Russian Federation Boris Rosenfeld wrote about them: "two black coals of expressive eyes"),[6] and the lips as if saying the word "to live".

According to Seklyutsky, the sunny landscape, full of greenery and flowers, fresh mountain air, creates an atmosphere of optimism and gives the viewer hope for the recovery of the heroine of the canvas; he regretted that art historians underestimate this painting, noting in it not only pictorial merits, but also sincere empathy of the artist with his character, a burning desire to help her.

For many years he was a "colonel with seniority", was listed in the Guards Foot Artillery, was the head of the workshop at the St. Petersburg Cartridge Factory, performed "special tasks" there.

[12] Frida Roginskaya, a staff member of the Research Institute for the Theory and History of Fine Arts, claimed that he "actually bore the entire burden of leading the Society".

[8] In 1885, Yaroshenko's wife Maria Pavlovna bought a dacha there,[18] but he didn't move there from St. Petersburg until 1892, after resigning from the civil service due to a sharp deterioration in his health.

The terrace was painted by the artist himself in the "Pompeian style", where the family usually ate lunch, drank tea and spent much of their free time in the summer.

[20] In the summer of 1890, Vladimir Chertkov, the publisher and opposition figure, supporter and friend of Leo Tolstoy, and his wife Anna,[21] who in 1883 had become the prototype of the painting "Student",[22] arrived in the city.

The Chertkovs' young son Vladimir (in the family he was called Dima) served as a model for the painting "A Sleeping Child" (1890, was in the Poltava Art Museum, died during the Great Patriotic War),[23][Note 4][24] and Anna posed for the canvas "In a Warm Land".

[27] The artist Mikhail Nesterov, who himself lived in Kislovodsk at that time, wrote that Yaroshenko allocated a whole wing to the Chertkovs' residence, which was even larger than the White Villa itself.

There are also preserved drawings of Anna Chertkova made by the artist in that year: "A. K. Chertkova on the balcony" (paper, Italian graphic pencil, 17,5 × 13,3 cm, in the drawing by the hand of his son Vladimir signed "A friendly sketch of Yaroshenko with my mother")[29] and "Chertkov family friendly caricature" (paper, cardboard, graphic pencil, 20×23 cm).

[32] Only Irina Polenova, a senior researcher at the N. A. Yaroshenko Memorial Estate Museum, mentioned "A Sleeping Child" in connection with the exhibition in her 2018 book.

Under the ceiling of the station hang thick clouds of steam, dispersing after the departure of the railway platform, porter sweeps away the litter from the stone slabs, hands behind his back next to indifferent stands a policeman) in the warm lands of that suffering from consumption woman sitting in a chair on the balcony of Kovslevodskom.

[41] Leo Tolstoy's last secretary Valentin Bulgakov, later author of memoirs about the writer's entourage and Soviet artists, well acquainted with both Anna Chertkova and Nikolai Yaroshenko, wrote in his memoirs after the World War II:[42]Here Anna Konstantinovna is portrayed at a mature age, after her marriage and after a serious illness: the lady, not yet old, wrapped in a plaid and shawls, is depicted sitting in an armchair on an open veranda covered with roses somewhere in the south, probably in the Crimea.

[42] In his monograph on Yaroshenko, candidate of art history Vladimir Prytkov wrote that the artist showed great professionalism in painting.

The shawl thrown over the woman's head corresponds to the color of the pillow, "bluish in the shade and yellowish in the light", "the black dress is painted over the brownish ground with free strokes of blue-violet general tone and harmonizes well with the lilac plaid".

The generalized painted background is characterized by a "subtle nuance of color"; behind the balustrade, the dark green foliage includes "lush patches of roses.

In the figure of the woman, in the movement of her hands, in her pale face and in the look of her black eyes, one can feel the impulse to live and, at the same time, the bitter awareness that, even after her death, "indifferent nature will shine with eternal beauty".

[45] The Soviet and Russian art historian Tatiana Gorina also believed that Yaroshenko had weakened the social and moral issues, as well as artistic integrity, in the painting "In a Warm Land".

[46]Art history candidate Sophia Goldstein noted the artist's use of the principles of fragmentary composition characteristic of some of Yaroshenko's works in genre painting of the late 80s and early 90s ("On a Swing," 1888, cardboard, oil, 58.3×40.5 cm, State Russian Museum; "Dreamer", 1892, whereabouts unknown; "Choir", 1894, originally in the private collection of T. N. Pavlova in St. Petersburg, now in the Memorial Museum-estate of N. A. Yaroshenko, and others).

[48] Soviet art historian Vladimir Porudominsky emphasized in the painting "In a Warm Land" sadness hopelessly ill woman, "with a special acuity feel his place in nature ...".

In a letter to Anna Chertkova he reported: "A month and a half was almost immobile and not fit for anything body, could only lie or sit in an armchair, in the cushions ... like you in the picture that I wrote of you".

[Note 7][49][50][51][3] Vladimir Porudominsky wrote that the heroine of the painting "turned out to be a beautiful lady with exquisitely correct features (which expressed not so much her or the artist's suffering as the desire to make it 'touching'), with thin, graceful hands, which she holds in a somewhat ostentatious manner; the landscape is painted in muted tones, lines and colors of his soothed, pritishcheny, favorite Yaroshenko powerful, formidable images of nature gave way to a beautiful view, largely hidden around the balcony trees and shrubs, on the balcony along the white marble railing put garden plants in tubs, pleasant pink flowers pleasing to the eye".

Historian Gregory Wolf noted a combination of sadness and beauty in the painting, emphasizing the heroine's delicate features and thin, graceful hands.