Vera Voeikova (1792–1873) received an excellent education as a young girl thanks to a woman that raised her after her parents’ death. She knew French and Russian literature. As a “mamie”, she managed to teach the importance of developing artistic abilities and she was also telling stories about the war of 1812. Her fiancé, the Colonel Alexeï Voeikov, had important missions back in the days as a military. Today, at the Museum-House of Polenovo, we can see a glass cup with the Napoleonic coat of arm: Alexeï retrieved it from a chest containing French army official dinner service. Other important ancestor of Vasily Polenov was his great grandfather, Alekseï Polenov (1738–1816). As a famous scholar, he was the first Russian jurist with a multidisciplinary education (economics, history, philosophy...). He participated to an essay competition organized by the Free Economic Society in 1766 on the following subject: “what is more useful to the State: that peasants should own land or own only property?”. His text was then entitled “On the abolition of the serfdom of russian peasants”, which became effective 100 years after. Studies and european years Vasily Polenov simultaneously enrolled to the Imperial Academy of Arts and to the Law University in Saint Petersbourg (1863–1871). Polenov studied under Pavel Chistyakov and was a classmate and close friend of Rafail Levitsky, a fellow Peredvizhniki artist and photographer. Their letters, which are now stored in the Polenov's House museum, are an interesting account of the many art exhibitions, movements and artists of their time. As bachelors, Polenov and Levitsky lived and worked together in "Devich'e Pole" (the name of the street "Maiden's Field"), in an attic of the Olsufevsky House (the home of Rafail Levitsky's future wife Anna Vasilevna Olsufevskaya). This house is illustrated by Polenov in his painting “Grandmother's Garden” (1878). As one of the best students of the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts, he received the Great Medal for his painting The Resurrection of the daughter of Jairus (1871, Museum of the Academy of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg). This work was his first approach to a biblical theme for which the young artist had a deep interest. The price he received for this painting allowed him, along with other laureates, to become a pensioner (scholarship's owner) abroad and live in Europe at the expenses of the Russian State. At the end of the summer of 1872, Vasily Polenov crossed Germany