Preiss was married three times. His first wife was the communist intelligence agent Gertrude Gennis — and soon the artist, following his wife, began to spy in favour of the USSR. During World War II, they were arrested as ethnic Germans and exiled to Siberia, to Tomsk, where Gertrude died of tuberculosis. 

Preiss then married a teacher at the Tomsk Medical Institute, Evgenia Gontar, with whom he moved to Kemerovo, where she first headed one of the departments of the new medical institute, and then was prorector. However, Gontar too passed away soon. At her funeral, the artist met Lyubov Biryukova — some time later they got married. 

It is Biryukova who is depicted in this graphic portrait. Preiss executed it in the technique of sketching, with quick lines. The artist not only achieved a portrait resemblance to the model, but also conveyed her emotional state. Preiss was a master of quick portraits, later he created a large graphic series with images of artists of the Kemerovo Philharmonic. Moreover, he executed those drawings right during the performance. 

Preiss and Biryukova had lived together for 21 years. The artist painted his spouse very often: most of the female graphic and painted portraits are dedicated to her. The Kemerovo period was also the most fruitful for Preiss, and this is confirmed by the entries in his diaries. The artist approached creativity with particular pedantry: he noted how many paintings he had created over the past year. 

The portrait of Lyubov Biryukova Lost in Thought entered the collection of the Kemerovo Regional Museum of Fine Arts in 2010. It was donated by Lyudmila Biryukova, the adopted daughter of Preiss. When the artist married her mother, the girl was 15 years old. ‘He was a man of different culture, a different level of education’, she said. The artist’s stepdaughter keeps some of his paintings. In the artist’s study, Lyudmila Biryukova placed a selection of female images in red, among which there are painted portraits of her mother.