Peasants dancing is a particularly striking example of Goncharova’s transposition of the influence of her French contemporaries. When painting this work she was undoubtedly aware of Henri Matisse’s famous  Dance1910 which arrived in Moscow in December 1910. But whereas Matisse’s dance is performed by athletic brown nudes from some Mediterranean arcadia, Goncharova chose dancing peasants, arranged in a flat frieze as in folk embroidery. Paintings by Goncharova were included in the influential Second Post-Impressionist Exhibitionheld in London in 1912, which introduced British audiences to modern works by French and Russian artists.