Skaters in Winter (The Garden of the Petit Trianon in Versailles)

In the background the lateral wall of the Petit Trianon is drawn clearly.

In the foreground the birds - geese and ducks - are reduced to schematic silhouettes, almost caricatures. These birds, evenly spaced out along the bank seem to be seated for a show, and one would say that they are the main theme of the painting.

In the background, the artist has placed the small, dark, quickly sketched silhouettes of the skaters going round in circles on the patch of ice allocated to them, and the foreshortening perspective chosen by the painter gives them the aspect of insects, tiny compared with the geese.

The poplars are depicted as if they were flames, in reddish tonalities that heat up the color scale, perfectly observed, of a snowy sky, grey and heavy, with undefined shades.