Her mother, Maria, a writer of children's stories and an amateur artist, provided her first drawing lessons.

[2] From 1870 to 1877, she worked in Chistyakov's studios, then took classes in watercolors and ceramics at the Imperial Society, through 1880, with a break when she and her sister were volunteers in a hospital during the Russo-Turkish War.

Although "War of the Mushrooms" (1889) were the only ones published during her lifetime,[3] her work influenced other illustrators such as Ivan Bilibin and Sergey Malyutin.

Polenova exhibited her work at the Palace of Fine Arts at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Illinois.

[citation needed] In April 1896, while riding in a cab on Tsvetnoy Boulevard, her carriage's wheels got caught in the tram rails and overturned.

[1] In her memory, her brothers established an award of 300 Rubles, to be presented to promising young artists so they could study abroad.