Tamara de Lempicka was one of the most famous painters in Paris during the 1920s and 1930s, renowned for her stylish Art Deco portraits.

Born in Poland in 1898, she developed an interest in art at an early age. In 1911, she spent six months in Italy with her maternal grandmother, visiting the museums of Florence, Rome and Venice. There, Lempicka discovered the masters of the Italian Renaissance, and the experience convinced her to become a painter. She began her studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in St Petersburg while still a teen but fled to Paris at the outbreak of the Russian Revolution.

Through the 1920s, she established a reputation as a leading portrait artist to the rich and sophisticated set of Paris. Her works were characterised by their precise draughtsmanship, theatrical lighting and dramatic, sensual modelling of the human body.