Ivan Makarov was born in 1822 in Arzamas, into an artist’s family. His father graduated from the Arzamas School of Alexander Stupin and worked as a drawing teacher in the district town of Saransk, Penza governorate. Then, he organized his own drawing school, first in Saransk, and then in Penza. It was under the guidance of his father that young Makarov achieved his first success in fine arts. In 1845, he entered the Academy of Arts, where he studied in the class of the teacher Alexey Markov. In 1853, at the expense of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts and with the help of the Grand Duchess Maria Nikolayevna, Ivan Makarov went abroad to Rome. Speaking about his technique, contemporaries called Makarov the successor of the traditions of the artist Karl Bryullov. Most often, Makarov painted portraits of children and women.

In the middle of the 19th century, the genre of a secular portrait was in great demand in aristocratic circles. In 1859, Ivan Makarov painted a portrait of Baroness Sophia Staal von Holstein, wife of the commander of the Imperial Dragoon Regiment. Sophia Nikolayevna received a good musical education and had a strong voice, she was taught in the traditions of the Italian singing school. The Baroness often performed at concerts in front of the public. Among the performances were works by her uncle, the famous composer Alexander Alyabyev. He dedicated several Russian romances to her.

Among the Moscow noble circles, Sophia Staal von Holstein was known for her beauty. According to her contemporaries, she “drove the whole regiment crazy.” Poet Mikhail Lermontov, with whom the Holstein was familiar, in his poem “To Zeidler”, playing on the name of Sophia Staal, hinted at the feelings of his classmate Mikhail Zeidler for her:

In the 1850s, Sophia Staal von Holstein lived in Voronezh. She was in the women’s guardianship department of prisons in the Voronezh governorate, and in the 1860s, she became one of the founders of the musical society.