Bildnis der Sofja Dragomirowa

The sitter was 18, and her father is why Repin knew the family. General Mikhail Dragomirov commanded the Kiev military district, and while Repin was working out his big canvas of the Zaporozhian Cossacks writing their mocking letter to the Turkish sultan, he gave the laughing ataman at the centre of it the general's face. In 1889 the general's daughter Sofya came to Repin's Petersburg studio and sat in Ukrainian dress, a green korsetka trimmed with red over a skirt hung with red woollen tassels, the kind worn around Kyiv and Poltava. She married later and became Lukomskaya, and lived until 1953. While she was sitting for Repin, Valentin Serov came by the studio, asked to paint her as well, and did. His portrait of her from that same year hangs in the same museum.