Zinaida Yevgenyevna Serebriakova[a] (Russian: Зинаида Евгеньевна Серебрякова; née Lansere (Лансере); 10 December [O.S.

In 1901, at the age of 17, she entered the art school founded by Princess Maria Tenisheva and studied with Ilya Repin.

[1][6] Following her marriage to Boris Serebriakov, she studied at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris from 1905 to 1906.

[5] Serebriakova's most famous self-portrait, At the Dressing-Table (1909, Tretyakov Gallery), was painted while she was snowed in at her family home and models from a nearby village were unable to travel there.

[7] Her brother Yevgeny encouraged Serebriakova to enter the painting in an exhibition mounted by Mir iskusstva in 1910, where it was received with enthusiasm and purchased for the Tretyakov Gallery collection.

[7] The council recommended that the title of academician be awarded to Serebriakova, Anna Ostroumova-Lebedeva, Olga Della-Vos-Kardovskaya and Aleksandra Shneyder.

[7] In 1916, Alexander Benois was commissioned to decorate the Kazan Railway Station in Moscow and he invited Yevgeny Lanceray, Boris Kustodiev, Mstislav Dobuzhinsky, and Serebriakova to help him.

Serebriakova took on the theme of the Orient: India, Japan, Turkey, and Siam are represented allegorically in the form of beautiful women.

She did not want to switch to the Suprematist or Contructivist styles popular in the art of the early Soviet period, nor paint portraits of commissars, but she found some work at the Kharkov Archaeological Museum, where she made pencil drawings of the exhibits.

During a six-week trip to Morocco in December 1928, she created more than 130 portraits and cityscapes which she called “sketches,” drawn in haste as none of the locals would agree to pose, and only three landscapes for fear of straying too far from Marrakech.

She was fascinated by the landscapes of northern Africa and painted the Atlas Mountains, as well as Arab women and Africans in ethnic clothing.

Serebriakova's works were finally exhibited in the Soviet Union in 1966, in Moscow, Leningrad, and Kiev, to great acclaim.