The future artist’s father was the head of the Public Library and a philosophy professor. Nikolay Radlov’s brother became a stage director. The outstanding artist Mikhail Vrubel was a relative to Nikolay Radlov maternally. Thus, Nikolay Radlov grew up in the atmosphere of honoring art and love of art.
 

Nikolay Radlov had his theoretical articles and monographs about artists published in the magazines Apollo, World of Art, and Argus from 1912. Moreover he wrote the column Art News from the West for the Apollo. From 1913 he made caricatures in the New Satyricon log and illustrated books.
 

Nikolay Radlov made water colors and oil paintings in the landscape, still life, and portrait genres.    
 

In the 1920s the artist was especially fond of satirical graphic art. He became one of the most famous Russian caricaturists and contributed for comic and children's logs of Moscow and Leningrad.
 

Nikolay Radlov created his major illustrations in the 1930s and they were coloured. He made most interesting use of color and ornament patterns for illustrations of children's books. Besides, he illustrated Diavaliada by Mikhail Bulgakov, and books by Olga Forsh and Vyacheslav Shishkov as well as works by foreign authors, such as William Shakespeare, Honore de Balzac, Anatole France, and Jerome Klapka Jerome.
 

Nikolay Radlov's illustrations always vary in style, since the artist’s calling was in continuous search, according to him. He believed that one should have absolute mastery over any form to be able to convey the content in illustration.
 

Nikolay Radlov's art book about animals Stories in Pictures co-created with the poet Daniil Kharms, won the second award at the International Children's Book Competition in the USA in 1937, and then was repeatedly reissued both in the USSR and abroad.