Yelena Polenova made the sketch A Work Scene around 1881–1883. She portrayed a room in Abramtsevo, the famous philanthropist Savva Mamontov’s estate, which is right outside Moscow. During those years, the artist managed a carpentry workshop there. In this sketch, Yelena Polenova captured a part of the room where restoration work was taking place. There is scaffolding set up in the room. All the surfaces are graphically scattered with trappings that are very familiar to artists: palettes with paints, buckets of brushes, paper for sanding pottery, and rags for cleaning instruments. Paintings can be seen on the walls.
Yelena Polenova was born in 1850, and lived until 1898. She created paintings, and made modernist decorations, and drew illustrations for books and the famous magazine World of Art. One of her great achievements was creating watercolor graphics for Russian folk tales. The art critic Lidiya Kudryavtseva said: ‘Yelena Polenova is the first artist of all Russian artists who realized that Russian children grow up on German and English fairy tales.’ Also, this artist is remembered as the young sister of the painter Vasiliy Polenov.
In the autumn of 1882, Yelena Polenova met Savva Mamontov. Professionally speaking, he was a very successful business owner and investor, but vocationally he was a gifted artist. He was distinguished by his refined taste, and passionately loved art. He gradually gathered together an entourage of like-minded people. By the 1880s, his estate near Moscow, Abramtsevo, had become a major center for Russian culture. Ilya Repin, Valentin Serov, Mikhail Vrubel, and many other famous artists often came here.
Yelena Polenova also became a member of the club that frequented Abramtsevo. Here, along with others, she painted pictures, staged home performances, worked in artisans’ workshops, and enthusiastically put together a broad collection of folk art. From 1885 to 1892, Yelena Polenova took over as the artistic director for the local carpentry workshop. Here, she created more than one hundred sketches, which were then used to make furniture and other household items decorated with carvings and paintings. She captured one of the work scenes from this life in full swing in a sketch.
