Portrait of Maria Sredina

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Golubkina's creative endeavors unfolded across multiple studios, each with its own unique history. Notably, her most renowned studio stood at Bolshoi Levshinsky Pereulok, situated within a building that once served as the Golubkina Museum in 1932, now an integral part of the Tretyakov Gallery's collection. A second studio, though no longer extant, was located on Krestovozdvizhensky Pereulok, where Golubkina produced her most pivotal works early in the 20th century. In 1902, Valentin Serov and Sergei Diaghilev paid a visit to this very location: Serov sought to showcase his companion a mantlepiece titled "Fire," which left him thoroughly astounded. This encounter was documented by Olga Knipper's letter to Anton Chekhov; she also penned an account of the bas-relief for the Moscow Arts Theatre, a piece Golubkina was laboring over in 1902. Golubkina's lasting impact is palpable through numerous works deeply connected with Moscow - most notably, portraits of Muscovites crafted across various periods: Maria Sredina, a renowned actress and translator (portrayed in 1903 and 1904), Anatoly Gunst, an architect (depicted in 1904), Nina Simonovich-Yefimova, an artist (captured in 1907), Nikolai Shakhov, a businessman and patron of the arts (portrayed in tinted plaster during the 1910s), Genrikh Broccard, a collector (rendered in tinted wood in 1911), Alexander Nazarevsky, an art scholar (also depicted in tinted wood in 1911), Grigory Zakharyin, a celebrated doctor ( immortalized in marble at the Sechenov Medical Academy in Moscow during 1910). One of Golubkina's earliest portraits created in Moscow was that of the artist Vasily Perepletchikov, cast in bronze in 1899.