Eugene Lanceray, also spelled Yevgeny Lansere was born into the family of the animal sculptor E.A. Lansere on September 4, 1875. From 1891 the future artist studied at the Drawing School of the Society for Encouragement of Arts, where his teachers were N. Samokish, Ya. Tsionglinsky, and E. Lipgart. In 1895 he left for Paris to study under Rodolphe Julian and Filippo Colarossi.

In 1898 he returned to St. Petersburg and participated in design of the famous Mir Iskusstva aka World of Art journal. His satirical drawings were published in a few satirical magazines. In addition to that Eugene Lanceray created paintings dedicated to the history of St. Petersburg and illustrated the story Hadji Murat by Leo Tolstoy.

From 1917 to 1933 Eugene Lanceray lived in Dagestan, and later in Tbilisi, where he worked as an artist in the Ethnography Museum, and then took part in ethnographic expeditions as an artist of the Archaeology Institute.

From 1934 his life and creativity was associated with Moscow. He made stage design for several plays, a few monumental paintings (the hall of the Bolshoi Theater, plafonds of the Moscow Hotel, etc.).