Pyotr Konchalovsky was born in 1876 to a noble family. Since his childhood, he was fond of drawing and illustrating books. His father, Pyotr Konchalovsky, was a writer and a translator. At home, they used to stage amateur plays, for which young Pyotr would paint decorations. Vasily Surikov, Ilya Repin, Mikhail Vrubel, Valentin Serov, Konstantin Korovin, and Isaak Levitan were frequent guests in the house. Years later, Surikov’s daughter Olga married Pyotr Konchalovsky.

Konchalovsky was a member of the Jack of Diamonds avant-garde society named after the 1910 exhibition that had enormous if controversial success. Its founders comprised Ilya Mashkov, Mikhail Larionov, Aristarkh Lentulov, and Natalia Goncharova. Visitors of the exhibition associated its name either with the card jargon where the Jack of Diamonds stands for a rogue or a cheat, or with prison clothes with their patch in the form of a diamond.

Despite his classical artistic education, Pyotr Konchalovsky took a great interest in modern European art. In 1895, the artist visited the exhibition of French post-impressionists and then moved to Paris to study painting. In later years, Konchalovsky went to Europe several times to see the works of fauvists, cubists, Vincent van Gogh, and Paul Cézanne. Alexandre Benois even called Konchalovsky and several other Jack of Diamonds members “the Russian Сézannists”.

The 1918 portrait by Konchalovsky shows Anna Gentz, one of his pupils. The artist preferred to focus on colour rather than on the character and emotions of the model. Konchalovsky painted Gents’ figure in broad and bold brush-strokes. The prime coat showing through the paint creates a multidimensional effect. The textured canvas makes one feel that it was painted by the artist in one breath. Art expert Dmitry Sarabianov wrote about the artist: ‘Konchalovsky was passionate about colour. He could see and feel it with physiological sensitivity.’

Two years later, Pyotr Konchalovsky painted another portrait of Anna Gentz. His letters suggest that the second version is now in Paris.