Vasily Dmitrievich Polenov was a man of versatile talent - a teacher, theater artist, military illustrator, writer, composer and architect. According to his project, the estate was built and furniture made, he wrote operettas and made costumes for village theater productions, he composed music for them, taught at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, participated in the Serbian-Turkish War and received a medal and order. 

In 1897, Vasily Polenov worked on sketches of scenery for Orpheus and Eurydice by K.V. Gluck in the Russian private opera of Savva Mamontov, having recently returned from Rome and Paris and already planning a second trip to the East. It was at this time, resting on the Oka, when he wrote a small sketch “Privolzhsky village”, which a year later at the XXVI exhibition of the Association of Wanderers was listed as “Coastal suburbs” and in 1899 was presented by the author to the Penza Regional Picture Gallery.