The famous painter Nikolai Yaroshenko was called a general among the traveling artists by his contemporaries. He skillfully combined two completely different spheres: military service, through which he rose to the rank of general, and painting, which brought him worldwide fame.

When Kolya was a nine-year-old boy, he was enrolled in the Poltava Cadet Corps. There, in addition to military disciplines, the cadets studied drawing, in which the future artist had a special talent. Later, Nikolai studied at the St. Petersburg Military Artillery School and attended evening drawing classes at the Academy of Arts, where Ivan Kramskoy taught. His strong character allowed Nikolai to work with complete dedication. He devoted all his free time to painting, but at the same time, he diligently served to avoid disappointing his father, who dreamed of seeing him as a career military officer.

In 1875, Yaroshenko debuted at the Fourth Traveling Exhibition with the painting "Nevsky Prospect at Night." It depicted a rainy night and two women huddled together on the doorstep of a wealthy house, forced by fate to be on the street. Unfortunately, this canvas was destroyed during World War II.

Before retiring, Yaroshenko often visited the North Caucasus and brought back "fantastic" landscapes that caused a sensation among the capital's audience. At that time, the North Caucasus was a distant and unexplored region for most Russians. Therefore, when a painting featuring a view of Elbrus was presented at the exhibition, the viewers considered the depicted panorama of the Caucasus Range a product of the artist's imagination.

The painting "Life Everywhere," created in 1888, became the pinnacle of Yaroshenko's creative maturity and received wide recognition at the XVI Traveling Exhibition. The original composition of this work resembles a frame from life: a train window, people behind bars, planks of the platform, birds. This creates the impression of a fleeting scene and makes the painting believable and lifelike.