The life of symbolist artist Viktor Elpidiforovich Borisov-Musatov turned out to be unfairly short: he lived only 35 years. But his creative heritage to this day excites and makes you think.

The future master of painting was born in Saratov in 1870. The boy, who had been drawing enthusiastically from the age of 6, was first admitted to the studio of the Saratov Society of Fine Arts. Having acquired his first artistic skills, the young man continued his studies at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. That was followed by studies at the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts and the Parisian studio of Fernand Cormon, who back in the day had ‘taken under his wing’ Toulouse-Lautrec and Van Gogh. 

The study Damsel and Dame (The Bygone), on which he began to work in 1902, is a sketch for the painting Pond, which became a major one in the painter’s art. On the canvas, the painter captured the two closest women to him — his younger sister Elena Borisova-Musatova and Elena Vladimirovna Alexandrova, who became his fiancée that summer. Only they were initiated into his new creative idea, which Borisov-Musatov withheld even from close friends. He shared with his bride his conviction that this painting should have been painted “either now or never”. Inspired by the announcement of the engagement, the artist hoped that the fame of the picture would become a worthy wedding gift.

The work took place on the estate of Zubrilovka — the family estate of the princes Golitsyn-Prozorovsky. In the 18th century, there had been built a three-storey palace house with side wings, which were united with a gallery with a winter garden and an orangery. Another attraction was the local park with centuries-old oaks, numerous streams and artificial grottoes. Over time, the once magnificent Zubrilovka fell into a state of neglect: the lanes and paths of the park became overgrown with grass, the house was slowly decaying.