Yelena Polenova

Yelena Dmitrievna Polenova (Russian: Елена Дмитриевна Поленова; 15 November 1850, Saint Petersburg - 7 November 1898, Moscow) was a Russian painter and graphic artist in the Art Nouveau style. She was one of the first illustrators of children's books in Russia. Her brother was the landscape painter, Vasily Polenov.

Most of her family members were involved in artistic or scientific pursuits. Her father, Dmitri Polenov, was a historian and diplomat who served as a Privy Councilor. She was raised on the family estates in Olonets Governorate and Tambov Governorate. Her mother, who was a writer of children's stories and an amateur artist, provided her first drawing lessons. Beginning in 1859, she and her siblings all received lessons from Pavel Chistyakov.

At that time, women were not admitted to the Imperial Academy of Arts so, at age fourteen, she enrolled at the drawing school operated by the Imperial Society for the Encouragement of the Arts, where she studied with Ivan Kramskoi. From 1869 to 1870, she visited France and took private lessons from Charles Joshua Chaplin.

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. She fell in love with a doctor there, but her family was opposed to a marriage. Although she conceded to their wishes, it left her deeply unhappy.

She did so well at ceramics that the Society gave her a stipend to study in Paris; something which few women artists received. There, she worked with Théodore Deck and Evdokim Egrorov (1832-1891) and had her first exposure to Art Nouveau. Upon returning to Saint Petersburg, she taught porcelain painting and created pieces of Victorian majolica.

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