[1] Together with two other Polenov's works of the late 1870s – paintings Moscow Courtyard and Grandmother's Garden – canvas "Overgrown Pond" refers to "a kind of lyrical and philosophical trilogy of the artist".

[8][9] According to the art historian Aleksei Fedorov-Davydov, in the painting "Overgrown Pond" Polenov managed "with the greatest force and picturesque beauty" to express "real, but wrapped in a kind of romance poetry of nature".

[10] Art historian Tamara Yurova noted that this painting "completed a certain stage of Polenov's work, marked the onset of creative maturity".

In 1876, having joined the Russian volunteer army to take part in the First Serbian–Ottoman War, he traveled to the area of combat operations, where he created several drawings based on his battle impressions.

[13] On 5 July 1877, the artist's parents, Dmitriy Vasilevich Polenov and Maria Alekseevna, invited him to their dacha, which was located in the village of Petrushki near Kyiv.

[14][15] September 1877 Polenov spent in Olshanka,[14] in the estate of his grandmother Vera Nikolaevna Voeikova, located in Borisoglebsky Uyezd Tambov Governorate.

With exhibitions the painting visited several foreign cities — Belgrade (1970), Bucharest (1973), Warsaw (1973), Berlin (1976), Washington, Chicago, Boston, Los Angeles (1986–1987), Cologne, Zürich (1990) and Wuppertal (2005–2006).

[30][31][5] The impression of the park's vastness is achieved by the canvas showing only the lower parts of trunks and branches leaning to the water,[30] the artist "cuts off the tops of the trees with a frame, as if bringing the whole image closer to the viewer".

Due to this, the viewer's eye is directed into the depths, where a young woman in a light-colored dress sits on a bench,[5] whose figure is almost "dissolved" in the landscape.

[1] Art historian Olga Lyaskovskaya wrote that when working on the painting "Overgrown Pond" Polenov "strove for a balanced composition, for the overall impression of pictorialism".

According to her, the artist "peculiarly and truthfully" conveyed the texture of grass and leaves, as well as beautifully summarized "shrouded in fog distant clumps of trees and a corner of the blue sky with a cloud, reflected in the water".

This creates the impression that "no two tones in the landscape are exactly the same", and there is also no "somewhat neutral paint, which solidly covered individual pieces of canvas in "Moscow Courtyard"."

[43][11] According to art historian Aleksei Fedorov-Davydov, in the painting "Overgrown Pond" Polenov managed "with the greatest force and picturesque beauty" to express "the real, but laden with a kind of romanticism poetry of nature".

[8][9] In a monograph on the work of the artist, she noted that in the landscape "Overgrown Pond" "in the depiction of the old park, solemn in its monumental grandeur, prevails sublimely dreamy mood," which is "emphasized by the fragile motionless and pensive figure of a woman standing alone against the background of dark trees, spreading a mighty tent and as if serving as a safe haven for her."