Serebriakova also painted self-portraits thoughout her life. With all their vivacity and honesty they might just be her best work. As with her playful Self-Portrait as Pierrot, and another in the mirror with her beloved children:
Serebriakova sent her Self-Portrait At the Dressing Table to an exhibition in 1909 - it was received with critical acclaim. Even then her startlingly modern expression was a hit. Along with Green Autumn and Peasant Girl, all were successfully auctioned.
From 1914 onwards Serebriakova started to reach full artistic maturity, and certainly enjoyed the most successful years of her career with paintings such as Harvest (1915) and Bleaching Linen (1917). She was all set to become part of the St. Petersburg Academy...
But everything changed with the Russian Revolution of 1917. The first problem was artistic: her personal style was no longer welcome in the world of avant-garde and Suprematist and Constructivist art favoured by Soviet Russia.
And there was personal tragedy. Her beloved husband Boris was arrested in 1919 and died of typhus in jail. Without his income and with declining commissions in the new regime, things took a downward turn. Serebriakova was now a single mother with four children to raise:
They left the family estate - which had been plundered - and moved to an apartment in Petrograd. She couldn't afford oil paints anymore, but Serebriakova continued to paint, taking an interest in ballet and theatre, which her daughter Ekaterina had taken up:
She also continued to paint her children, perhaps with a streak of melancholy rather than the purer joy that had come before. But something had to give...
In 1924 she travelled to Paris, hoping to find commissions there and thus raise enough money to support her family. Little could Serebriakova have known that travel would soon be restricted by the Soviet government. She was refused re-entry into Russia and became an exile.
Serebriakova found both work and community in Paris with a group of Russian emigres and sent her earnings home. In 1926 her youngest son, Alexander, was allowed to join her, and in 1928 Ekaterina followed.
Here we see Serebkriakova in a 1930 self-portrait, looking perhaps a little more world-weary than in her earlier self-portraits:
Serebriakova also visited Morocco several times, which left a deep impression on her. There she found great delight in painting the ordinary people, as once she had done in Russia:
And back in France Serebriakova continued to paint the common people, whether fishermen or bakers, alongside portraits for wealthier clients: