Makovsky entered the Academy of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in 1851. His teachers — Mikhail Scotti, Sergei Zaryanko and Apollo Mokritsky — had been trained by Karl Bryullov. Already during his study years, Makovsky became interested in romanticism and the decorative effects of painting. In 1870, he joined the Society of Travelling Art Exhibitions, but after traveling to Egypt and Serbia, his artistic interest shifted from social issues to experiments with color and form.

 
In the 1890s, Makovsky moved away from the ideas of the Wanderers and turned to the traditions of Russian academic painting. At that time, he became known as a fashionable portraitist and master of history paintings and became one of the highest-paid artists in Russia in the second half of the 19th century. The art critic Alexander Benois, the founder of the ‘Mir iskusstva’ (‘World of Art’) association, wrote about Makovsky: ‘If any of the artists was popular in Russia, it was him. Perhaps people did not worship him, they did not call him God, but everyone loved him, and loved his very shortcomings — the very thing that brought the artist closer to his time’.

 
Makovsky painted ‘Portrait of a Girl’, which is now part of the museum collection, in 1877. The artist created child portraits throughout his life and this is one of the earliest works of this genre.

 
Makovsky does not make the child’s image complicated. Through an open combination of white and red colors and the contrast of the girl’s figure and the dark background, the artist enhances the sense of purity, innocence and carefree joy. The splendor and elegance of the dress makes the portrait decorative.

 
In his works, Makovsky sought to portray his models in a dramatic way. For this, he worked out in detail the entourage: the setting, the texture of fabrics and furs. In his portraits, there was an exact similarity with the models, but the artist did not immerse himself in their psychological state.

 
Some contemporaries criticized Makovsky’s work for emphasizing the external lavishness at the sake of ignoring the deepness of the plot. In his short biography of 1910, the artist replied to this opinion: