In the world of Natalia Gontcharova, the seemingly simple act of dating a piece of her artwork is often made even more challenging by a combination of additional factors, not the least of which was her usual habit of not dating her works at their creation...
Natalia Sergeevna Gontcharova was born and raised in pre-revolutionary Russia. As a student she was taught to write her name in the cyrillic alphabet (Наталиа Гонтчарова), and early in her career as an artist she signed works with both her full name or just her initials, often in the form of a monogram...