Petr Alexandrovich Nilus, the grandson of a general and participant in the 1812 war, became a well-known artist, especially in Odessa, where he studied at the art school in 1883 and 1889. However, his studies at the Academy of Arts lasted only a year. Enrolling there in 1889, Nilus soon left the Academy, deciding to pursue independent creativity. This bold step was taken on the advice of I.E. Repin, who believed that the Academy is not always beneficial for the development of talent, sometimes it merely standardizes.

Initially, Nilus enthusiastically embraced the 1917 revolution, but soon changed his mind. When the troops of the Volunteer Army led by A.I. Denikin entered Odessa, he supported them by creating a series of anti-Bolshevik posters. However, after the victory of the Reds, the artist realized that returning to Odessa could pose a deadly danger for him, and in 1919 he left Russia. For three years, he traveled across Europe, organizing solo exhibitions in Sofia, Vienna, Zagreb, Bucharest, and Belgrade.

At the end of 1923, Nilus settled in Paris, where he lived in the same building as I.A. Bunin. Their friendship, which began back in Odessa, was extremely important for the artist. Without the spiritual and sometimes material support of Bunin, enduring the hardships of emigration and the disappointment of the disappearing art world in Paris would have been particularly difficult.

Nilus's first solo exhibitions in Paris took place in 1925 at the prestigious galleries of J. Petit and J. Charpentier. The last exhibition during the artist's lifetime was held at the Zak gallery in 1934 and was a great success.

By the mid-1930s, Nilus focused on creating psychological portraits. He died in occupied Paris and was buried at the Bagneux cemetery.

Nilus's works are kept in the Tretyakov Gallery, the Odessa Art and Literature Museums, the State Literary Museum in Moscow, the I.N. Kramskoy Regional Art Museum in Voronezh, the Dnipro Art Museum, and in private collections.

In 1995, a significant part of his creative legacy from the Paris period, 73 works of painting and graphics, as well as personal belongings, photographs, letters, and exhibition catalogs, was transferred by the artist's stepdaughter V.L. Golubovskaya from Paris to Voronezh for the I.N. Kramskoy Art Museum and the future I.A. Bunin Museum.