Born in Saratov, Borisov-Musatov went to Moscow at the age of 20 and entered the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. However, he did not like it there and, a year later, moved to St. Petersburg to continue his studies at the Imperial Academy of Arts. It was then that he started adding Borisov to his last name, in honor of his grandfather, Boris Musatov.

After graduating from the Academy, Borisov-Musatov traveled in Europe and studied painting in Paris. Financial difficulties made him return home, to Saratov; there he began to convey his personal impressions and emotions of the trip through painting. His knowledge of European art helped him to develop his own unique and recognizable manner of painting. That time is considered the most fruitful period of his artistic career.

Borisov-Musatov liked to paint the disappearing world of the old gentry estates, the so-called nests of the gentry – it was his main theme – while the image of a young lady in white, the Musatov lady, was his ideal of beauty and a symbol of the vanishing old gentry. The artist masterfully conveys the feeling of luminous’ or gracious sadness and nostalgic view of the past glory of the disappearing epoch and of the time that cannot be reversed.