Portrait of a Young Woman

Made in 1839, this is watercolour on paper rather than oil, a lighter and quicker way of working, and the young woman in it carries no name that has come down to us. That year Zahari Zograf was still mainly a church painter, and setting down an ordinary young woman for her own sake, with no saint and no story attached, was still an unusual thing to do in the Bulgarian lands under Ottoman rule. Watercolour let him try it without the weight of a commissioned canvas. The very next year he painted the two oils, of himself and of his brother's wife, that are usually credited with beginning the National Revival secular portrait. This modest sheet comes just before them.