Zinaida Serebryakova was an artist, a member of the association Mir iskusstva (World of Art), one of the first Russian women made it into history of world painting. She was born in 1884 in the family of a famous sculptor Eugene Lansere. Serebryakova’s brothers were a painter and a graphic artist Yevgeny Lansere, an architect Nikolai Lansere, and her uncle was an artist and art historian Alexander Benois.
She studied at private schools of St. Petersburg and Paris. In 1900, Zinaida graduated from a female gymnasium and entered an art school founded by Princess Maria Tenisheva. In 1903-1905, she was a student of Osip Braz, a portrait painter. In 1902-1903, she traveled to Italy. In 1905-1906, she studied at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris.
In 1905, Zinaida Lansere got married to a student and her cousin Boris Serebryakov. In 1924, she went to Paris having received an order for a large decorative panel. She wasn’t able to return to post-revolutionary Russia. Until her death in 1967, Zinaida Serebryakova lived in Paris. The portrait presented in the exhibition of the Kaluga Museum of Fine Arts was among the works created in exile. This is an image of her Russian friend Sophia Lukomskaya, nee Dragomirova (1871-1953).
She was a daughter of a famous general Mikhail Dragomirov, Commander of the Kiev military district, and a wife of Alexander Lukomskoy, Lieutenant general, participant of the World War I and Civil War, a prominent figure in the White movement. After the October take-over, the Lukomsky’s went abroad and left Russia forever.
During their stay in Paris, they met Zinaida Serebryakova. Subsequently, warm friendly relations and many years of correspondence connected the Lukomsky’s and Serebryakov’s for many years by. In Paris, the artist painted several portraits of Sophia Mikhailovna and her daughter, also Sophia. The half-length portrait of Lukomskaya-Dragomirova from the collection of the Kaluga Museum of Fine Arts was created by Serebryakova in 1947 on the eve of the departure of 76-year-old Sofia Mikhailovna to America.
Once in her youth, her portraits were painted by great Russian artists, such as: Ilya Repin and Valentin Serov. On the portrait by Zinaida Serebryakova Lukomskaya is depicted in mourning, which she often wore after her husband’s death in 1939.
