This pastel portrait depicts Nadezhda Yuryevna Stanyukovich (Надежда Юрьевна Станюкович), who, according to the Tretyakov Gallery, was the “muse” of Russian artist Viktor Borisov-Musatov (Виктор Эльпидифорович Борисов-Мусатов). The young woman is seated front-facing but turned slightly to our left, her gaze lowered as if listening or thinking. She has fair, softly modeled skin and dark brown hair gathered up, with long ringlets falling beside her cheeks. Her expression is calm and distant with eyelids half lowered for the feeling of quiet concentration. She wears a historical, bronze-gold dress with a fitted bodice and full skirt. Pale lace trims the neckline and bands across the chest, and a small jewel-like ornament fastens at the center. Over the dress lies a cool silvery blue shawl, brushed with hints of pink and blue that catch the light like worn silk. Her hands rest gently in her lap, fingers relaxed, holding a thin cord that drops toward the hem. Behind her, a large wall tapestry shows a dreamlike park of bluish trees and misty architecture, plus a white swan at the right edge. The whole surface is velvety and grainy, as if the figure and the landscape are woven from the same soft dust of color. Her gown is not simply decorative. Nadezhda wears an inherited “great-grandmother” outfit, and the artist wrote with delight that she “posed wonderfully in her great-grandmother’s costume.” The backdrop is equally intentional because Borisov-Musatov turns the painting into a portrait-within-a-tapestry, letting the paper’s ribbed texture hold pastel pigment like threads held in cloth, so the image feels stitched rather than painted. The swan and distant estate are symbols of longing and fragile beauty, while her downward gaze makes the scene tender, private, and time-suspended. The portrait’s sense of luminous, fleeting presence feels even deeper learning Nadezhda tragically died in a wartime hospital during the Russo-Japanese War less than 2 years later in 1905.

“Дама у гобелена (Lady at the Tapestry)” by Viktor Borisov-Musatov (Russian) - Pastel on paper / 1903 - State Tretyakov Gallery (Moscow, Russia) #WomenInArt #ViktorBorisovMusatov #ВикторБорисовМусатов #BorisovMusatov #TretyakovGallery #art #artText #Третьяковскаягалерея #RussianArt #RussianArtist

Russian artist Mikhail Aleksandrovich Vrubel (Михаил Александрович Врубель) completed this work in 1900 while immersed in stage design for Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera “The Tale of Tsar Saltan,” adapted from Alexander Pushkin’s fairy tale. The Swan Princess’s part was created for Vrubel’s wife, the celebrated singer Nadezhda Ivanovna Zabela-Vrubel (Надежда Ивановна Забела-Врубель), and the painting carries the aura of performance including costume, spotlight, and spell without becoming a straightforward portrait. The pale-skinned young Nadezhda with a soft, feminine presentation turns to look back over her shoulder, meeting us with large, luminous gray-blue eyes. Dark hair frames her face beneath an extravagant crown-like kokoshnik encrusted with pearls and blue-green stones. A sheer veil and silvery embroidered fabric wrap her head and shoulders as one hand gathers the gauze at her neck in a protective, almost private gesture. Around her, enormous swan wings billow and fold like a living cape in layered strokes of white, gray, and blush-pink that are feathers and facets at the same time. The wings fill most of the canvas, curving forward so she seems both sheltered and enclosed by her own transformation. Behind her stretches a cool, dusk-blue shoreline and water, with a thin band of light on the horizon and a dark, rocky form at the edge. Vrubel’s paint alternates between misty, softened passages and crisp, mosaic-like planes, so jewels sparkle, lace glints, and feathers feel air-light yet weighty. The overall mood is hushed and watchful like a suspended moment between human and bird where wonder and caution share the same gaze. The wings act like a threshold of protection and power as well as tenderness and distance at the instant of metamorphosis. Soon after completion, this painting was acquired by collector Mikhail Morozov and was gifted in 1917 by Margarita Morozova to the Tretyakov Gallery (Государственная Третьяковская галерея).

“Царевна-Лебедь (The Swan Princess)” by Михаил Врубель / Mikhail Vrubel (Russian) - Oil on canvas / 1900 - State Tretyakov Gallery (Moscow, Russia) #WomenInArt #MikhailVrubel #МихаилВрубель #Vrubel #TretyakovGallery #Третьяковскаягалерея #RussianArt #art #artText #artwork #DanceArt #RussianArtist

Russian artist Zinaida Serebryakova (Зинаи́да Евге́ньевна Серебряко́ва) created this painting in 1909 while snowed in at her family estate in Neskuchnoye. Unable to work with village models, she turned to her own reflection, first sketching the “little things” scattered across her dressing table and then building them into a confident image of herself at 25. It's a radiant self-portrait of a young woman with light, rosy-beige skin and long brown hair meeting our gaze as if we are the mirror she faces. She gathers a heavy lock of long brown hair with one hand while the other holds it near a dark comb, her bare arms forming a soft triangle against a crisp white chemise. Her body turns three-quarters to the side, but her dark, arched eyes look straight out with a playful, knowing half-smile. Fine strokes describe the texture of her hair, a silver bracelet catching light on her wrist, and subtle blush in her cheeks. A dressing table below is crowded with everyday objects like tall brass candlesticks, delicate glass perfume bottles, powder tins, strings of pearls, pins, and folded textiles. Behind her, a pale bedroom dissolves into doors, linens and crockery, all painted in cool whites and gentle blues, so the whole scene glows with warm indoor light against a wintery outside. The mirror lets a private grooming ritual become a public declaration that she is both young mother and professional artist, entirely at ease in her own space. On her brother’s advice she sent the work to the Union of Russian Artists exhibition in Saint Petersburg, where critics hailed its freshness. Russian painter Valentin Serov called it “very cute and fresh,” and her uncle Alexandre Benois described it as a broad, generous smile offered to the Russian public. Quickly acquired by the Tretyakov Gallery (Государственная Третьяковская Галерея), this self-portrait became a symbol of her early success and remains a beloved landmark of women’s self-representation.

За туалетом. Автопортрет (At the Dressing Table aka Self-Portrait) by Zinaida Serebryakova (Russian) - Oil on canvas / 1909 - State Tretyakov Gallery (Moscow, Russia) #WomenInArt #SelfPortrait #art #artText #ZinaidaSerebryakova #Serebryakova #TretyakovGallery #WomensArt #WomanArtist #WomenArtists

Zinaida Nikolayevna Gippius (Зинаи́да Никола́евна Ги́ппиус) was a Russian poet, playwright, novelist, editor, and religious thinker. She is considered one of the major figures in Russian symbolism. Gippius treated her poetry as something intimate, calling her verses “personal prayers.” Dealing with the darker side of the human soul and exploring sexual ambiguity and narcissism, many of those “prayers” were considered blasphemous at the time. Detractors called Gippius a “demoness,” the “queen of duality,” and a “decadent Madonna.” Enjoying the notoriety, she exploited her androgynous image, used male clothes and pseudonyms, shocked her guests with insults (“to watch their reaction,” as she once explained to Nadezhda Teffi), and for a decade remained the Russian symbol of “sexual liberation;” holding high what she in one of her diary entries termed as the “cross of sensuality.” In 1901, all this transformed into the ideology of the "New Church" of which she was the instigator. This “gathering for free discussion,” focusing on the synthesis of culture and religion, brought together an eclectic mix of intellectuals and is now regarded as an important, if short-lived attempt to pull Russia back from the major social upheavals for which it was headed. Gippius together with her husband, poet Dmitry Merezhkovsky, opposed autocracy as well as conservatism. She denounced the 1917 October Revolution and, in early 1920, the Merezhkovskys emigrated to France. Russian painter Léon (Lev) Samoylovich Bakst (Russian: Леон (Лев) Самойлович Бакст), born Leyb-Khaim Izrailevich Rosenberg, sketched Gippius with reddish curly hair, dressed in aristocratic men’s clothing: black jacket over a lighter-colored waistcoat, a crisp white jabot at the neck, tight black trousers, and narrow black slip-on shoes. She casually reclines on a small white stool with her hands in her pants pockets and legs comfortably stretched out conveying a sense of relaxed confidence.

“Portrait of Zinaida Gippius” by Léon Bakst (Russian) - Pencil & chalk on paper & cardboard / 1906 - Tretyakov Gallery (Moscow, Russia) #WomenInArt #art #artwork #ArtText #TretyakovGallery #ZinaidaGippius #LéonBakst #Bakst #LeonBakst #Womensart #portraitofawoman #RussianArtist #JewishArtist #style

A young black haired girl in pink dress next to a thin dog on a patio attentively marvels at a young woman with curly blond braids wearing an elegant dress with long pure white skirt and puffy sky blue blouse that calmly sits atop a young black horse beginning to rear up on its hind legs, perhaps due to a happy brown dog behind the horse. The painting was commissioned by Countess Yuliya Pavlovna Samoylova in Milan. In the same year, 1832, it was exhibited at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan, where it was highly praised by the public and critics. In their reviews, the Italians compared Bryullov to Peter Paul Rubens and Antonis van Dyck and wrote that they had not yet seen "an equestrian portrait conceived and executed with such excellence". For almost forty years, almost nothing was known about the painting, which was part of the collection of Yuliya Samoylova. In 1872 or 1874, shortly before the death of the bankrupt Samoylova, her property was sold in Paris. At the auction "Horsewoman" was bought by one of the commissioners. Then it went to the St. Petersburg Society for the Pledge of Movable Property, where it was bought by Pavel Tretyakov in 1893. Art historians have concluded that Samoilova's pupil Giovannina was represented as the horsewoman, and the model for the little girl was Amacilia, the daughter of composer Giovanni Pacini and Samoilova's adopted daughter. According to the art historian Magdalina Rakova, "Horsewoman" is "a typical example of a portrait painting" in which "everything is conceived as an apotheosis of beauty and cheerful youth, as an apotheosis of the serenity of the feeling of life", and all this is contained in two actors: a young horsewoman and a little girl.

Всадница (Horsewoman or The Rider) by Карл Брюллов (Karl Bryullov) - Oil on canvas / 1832 - Tretyakov Gallery (Moscow, Russia) #womeninart #art #KarlBryullov #oilpainting #TretyakovGallery #artwork #womensart #horseart #horsewoman #horse #russianart #КарлБрюллов #horserider #artoftheday #fineart

A woman is dressed in a black fur and velvet coat, fur hat, with leather gloves. The woman is seated on an open carriage at the Anichkov Bridge in Saint Petersburg. Her identity has not been established by art historians. Kramskoi titled the painting Неизвестная (Unknown) and did not mention her in any of his letters or diaries, leading to much speculation and contributing to the painting's highly enigmatic reputation. Portrait of an Unknown Woman caused a sensation when first exhibited, more as a result of the subject matter than the aesthetics of the work. A number of critics presumed that the woman was a prostitute. One critic described the painting as a portrayal of "a coquette in a carriage", while another wrote of "a provocatively beautiful woman, all in velvet and fur, throwing you a sneeringly sensuous glance from a luxurious carriage – is this not one of the effluvia of big cities that allow contemptible women dressed in outfits purchased for the price of their female chastity onto the streets". Kramskoi remarked, "Some people have said it is not known who this woman is. Is she decent, or does she sell herself? But within her is an entire epoch." However, the painting's popularity quickly grew, in part as the beauty of sin became a popular theme with the following generation of Russian artists. It has been described as "unusually bright, densely painted, and relaxed. Kramskoi clearly tried to shine with his outstanding painterly mastery."

Portrait of an Unknown Woman by Ivan Kramskoi (Russian) - Oil on canvas / 1883 - Tretyakov Gallery (Moscow, Russia) #womeninart #painting #artwork #fineart #womensart #museumart #russianart #Неизвестная #art #kramskoi #portraitofawoman #ivankramskoi #TretyakovGallery #russianartist #artoftheday

“Clouds over the Beach.” Alexander Ivanov (Russian; 1806–1858). Oil on paper mounted on cardboard, mid–late 1830s. The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia.

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