Nikolai Aleksandrovich Yaroshenko spent thirty-seven years in military service and held respectable positions: at the age of thirty-one he became a colonel, and qualified for his reserve retirement as a major general. In parallel with his military activities, he was engaged in painting. He was known as a genre painter, portraitist and landscape painter.

Nicholas Konstantinovich Roerich noted,

Among the various portraits created by the artist, a prominent place is occupied by images of his outstanding contemporaries, as well as his friends. Each of those works is distinguished by great portrait likeness and a vivid psychological characterization. For a present-day viewer, this characterization is invariably supplemented with biographical information about the sitters, which is usually well-known.

The situation is quite different with respect to his portraits of unknown persons. They mainly serve as an example of a social portrait, significant and peculiar in its own way. This is especially true of the early works, clearly influenced by the philosophy of the Peredvizhniki artists (the Wanderers). Such is the “Portrait of the Nanny”. The painting, presumably, depicts the nanny of the Yaroshenko family.

The canvas is almost completely occupied by the figure of an elderly woman sitting in an armchair, dressed in a gray-green dress with polka dots, with a white scarf around her neck, a thick dark brown shawl, and a cap on her head. The overworked hands are in her lap. Her sad, pensive face with tired eyes speaks of her being immersed in thoughts about the past and compels the viewer to ponder as well. The color palette, which is restrained, but quite soft due to the warm tones of the face, hands, and background, creates an atmosphere of intimacy. At the very least, there is nothing of the grandeur and pompousness of salon portraits about the presented canvas, which would be clearly inappropriate. It is important to also note the artist’s respectful attitude towards the model.