The first biography of Nikolay Punin, this book offers a comprehensive analysis of his life in the context of Russian political, social and cultural history in the first half of the 20th century.

Natalia Murray graduated from the Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg before taking the PhD course at the Hermitage Museum in 1995. In 1998 she moved to England; over the past five years she has been lecturing on XIX-XX c. Russian Art at the Courtauld Institute of Art and at the University of Sussex. In 2010 she started her second PhD course at the Courtauld.