In the spring of 1911, Mikhail Larionov was serving in the military outside Moscow. Impressions of army life were reflected not only in his own work, but also in the work of his wife Natalia Goncharova.

This portrait echoes the so-called ‘Soldier Series’ of Larionov, and at the same time has all the features of mature Goncharova’s creative manner: the striving towards expression and monumentalism and the acuity of the pictorial optics, emphasized in this canvas by the contrast of the coarse male figures and a gentle flowering branch.