Vladimir Makovsky was born in Moscow, in the family of Egor Makovsky, a man of art and founder of the Moscow school of painting, sculpture and architecture. Vladimir had his first painting lessons from the portrait painter Vasily Tropinin. Already at the age of 15, he painted his first portrait on his own, this was the ‘Boy selling kvass’ (1861). He studied at the Moscow school of painting, sculpture and architecture, with Sergei Zaryanko and Evgraf Sorokin as teachers, they, in turn, were students of Alexey Venetsianov. He graduated from the school with a silver medal and the title of class artist of the 3rd degree.

In 1872, Makovsky became a member of the Association of traveling art exhibitions, his further career was tightly connected with this association. Vladimir Makovsky’s artworks were exhibited at 45 traveling exhibitions — a record number. Sometimes Makovsky exhibited even series of his artworks. Like other “peredvizhniki”s, he focused on the idea of the painting, accurate representation of social types or life situations.

In 1868, Vladimir Makovsky married Anna Gerasimova, and they had their first child, Alexander. Since 1869, Vladimir Makovsky often painted children. This theme became the main theme in his artworks in the 1870s. The painting “Knucklebones” depicting peasant children was the first artwork that Pavel Tretyakov bought for his gallery. In the future, Tretyakov purchased paintings from the artist several more times.

Makovsky often painted children against the background of the nature. The miniature artwork “Young fishermen” is an example of this direction in the artist’s works. This painting is a combination of two popular genres of the 19th century — genre painting and landscape painting. For the artists who worked with genre painting the main subject of their pictures was the everyday life of people. Interior elements or landscape were used to supplement the contents of the artwork — depending on where the events described by the artist took place. In his ‘Young fishermen’ Vladimir Makovsky made the surrounding landscape no less important than the main plot, and he thoroughly painted all the details.