A deceptively simple composition of great formal clarity — a close-up study of rounded hedge or shrub forms against the vertical column of a tree trunk. The three primary spherical masses — two large yellow-green forms at the lower center and one teal-blue form at upper right — are rendered with the confident single-wash technique of watercolor at its most resolved: each sphere is a single pooled wash, the pigment allowed to dry with its natural gradation, the form defined by the dark outline that separates it from its neighbors.
These outlines — in deep dark purple — are the painting's most distinctive element. They are not shadows or contours in the conventional sense but expressive marks, slightly irregular, carrying the energy of the loaded brush. They transform what could have been a naturalistic garden study into something more declarative, closer to the outlined forms of Gauguin's synthetism or early Matisse.
The tree trunk at upper center is handled with the most technical control in the work: vertical blue-gray wash strokes with fine dark lines suggesting bark, painted with deliberate directness. It reads as both observed fact and abstract vertical element, dividing the composition and providing the only non-curved form.
The ground — bright yellow-green radiating outward at the base — unifies the composition chromatically, tying the spheres to the earth they rest in. The background glimpsed through gaps in the hedge — warm yellow and green fields — suggests deep space behind an intimate foreground.
This is Sidney applying to landscape the same formal principles he applied to figure: simplification, outline, the primacy of color over description.