The Russian artist Alexey Gavrilovich Venetsianov (1780—1847) was born in Moscow, into a merchant family. He did not receive a systematic art education: initially he studied painting and drawing on his own. In St. Petersburg, where he moved in 1807, he served at first as an official. At the same time he was engaged in copying old masters in the Hermitage. There Alexey Gavrilovich met the famous portrait painter Vladimir Lukich Borovikovsky.

The young artist learned a lot from the master. Alexey Venetsianov’s first notable achievements were made in the genre of portrait. In 1811, he received the title of academician of the Imperial Academy of Arts, although he did not study at this institution. During the Patriotic War of 1812, the artist turned to satirical graphics and created a series of works in which he ridiculed those Russian nobles who worshiped everything French.

After the expulsion of the Napoleonic army, Alexey Gavrilovich Venetsianov published an alphabet in which each letter was accompanied by a witty drawing and a couplet about the events of the war. In the summer of 1819, the artist left St. Petersburg and settled in his Safonkovo estate near Tver. There he created a poetic peasant cycle of paintings. It includes such works as “Threshing Floor, ” “Sleeping Shepherd Boy, ” “In the Plowed Field: Spring, ” “Reaping, Summer, ” and “Peasant Woman with Cornflowers.”

Idealizing the image of peasant life, the artist sought to show the viewer the beauty of his native land and the people living on it. Alexey Gavrilovich was one of the first Russian painters who turned their attention to the charm of Russian nature, departing from the fixation on spectacular landscapes, traditional for academic painting. For him, harmony consisted in the spiritual unity of people and nature.

The “Portrait of a Woman” by Venetsianov from the collection of the Gorlovka Art Museum was also created during this period. The girl whom the master depicted in the portrait, apparently, belonged to an impoverished noble family.

In December 1847, Alexey Gavrilovich Venetsianov’s life was tragically interrupted. The cart on which the artist was traveling to Tver flew off an icy steep slope and crashed into a stone building.