Andrei Yumashev (1902–1988) was a legendary fighter pilot who flew across the North Pole from Moscow to the United States, setting a world record for a non-stop direct flight with flight commander Mikhail Gromov and Sergei Danilin. He was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union in 1937. As a boy, Andrei Yumashev had been interested in art. He attended the courses of the Society for the Encouragement of Artists and was later a friend of Ilya Mashkov, Robert Falk and Pyotr Konchalovsky. The pilot made sketches and painted portraits in the 1920s. Yumashev’s military career began at the age of sixteen, when he volunteered for the Red Army. He then became an air cadet and flew in the Winter War against Finland. The commander of a squadron of fighters during the Second World War, Yumashev paid occasional visits to Pyotr Konchalovsky in Moscow, where the artist painted his portrait. What’s more, Konchalovsky gave the aviator a canvas, brush and paints and he in turn painted a portrait of the artist. Later vice-commander of the First and Third Air Force on the Western Front, Yumashev fought at the Battle of Kursk in 1943. Major general of the Soviet Air Force (1943). After the war, he was transferred to the reserve and joined the Union of Artists in 1946. Andrei Yumashev was not only a professional pilot, but also a highly cultured individual. The portrait depicts his energy, strength, dignity and confidence. The style of painting and the very texture is energetic.