Zinaida Serebryakova painted “Portrait of Katya in the Kitchen” in St. Petersburg in 1924. It was one of the last portraits of the artist’s daughters created in Russia.

Zinaida Eugenyevna Serebryakova was one of the most famous artists of her time. She was born near Kharkov in the Neskuchnoye estate of the famous Benois-Lanceray family of architects and artists. She often came back to the estate and stayed there for long periods of time. Zinaida Serebryakova studied at a secondary school for girls, the art school of Princess Maria Klavdievna Tenisheva, after 1903 — in the studio of the portraitist Osip Emmanuilovich Braz, and later in Paris. Having returned to Russia, in 1911, Zinaida Serebryakova became a member of the Mir iskusstva (World of Art) group whose artists turned their gaze to the world and images of Russian art of the 18^th — early 19^thcentury. They organized exhibitions of works by Fyodor Rokotov, Dmitry Levitsky, Vladimir Borovikovsky, and Alexey Venetsianov, resurrecting the legacy of these forgotten artists. Zinaida Serebryakova was inspired by the paintings of Alexey Venetsianov and the Italian Renaissance from which she borrowed the utmost purity and exquisite beauty of images and the harmony of life. The artist lived in Russia until 1924 when she left on a short trip to Paris and stayed there forever.

Childhood is an important theme in the oeuvre of Zinaida Serebryakova. She painted many portraits of her children. According to her eldest daughter Tatyana, an artist of the Moscow Art Theater, this portrait shows her younger sister Yekaterina (Katya), “who has lived in Paris with our mother since 1927 and has become an artist, a master of miniature painting…” Yekaterina was featured in many of her mother’s paintings since childhood. Zinaida Serebryakova depicted her daughter working, reading, cleaning, and relaxing on the beach. Later, Yekaterina Serebryakova herself painted landscapes and domestic scenes in various regions of France, Belgium, England, Switzerland, and Italy which she visited with her mother and her brother Alexander. She preserved the family’s creative legacy in Paris and organized exhibitions exploring her mother’s art.

Yekaterina Serebryakova passed away at the age of 101 on August 26, 2014 in Paris. That year marked the 90^thanniversary of the painting “Portrait of Katya in the Kitchen”.