Portrait of Elizabeta Zvantseva

When Repin painted this in 1889, Elizabeta Zvantseva was his pupil, a young woman studying under one of Russia's most celebrated painters. By most accounts he was captivated by her and wrote her letters she did not return in kind. What she did afterward matters more here. In 1899 Zvantseva opened her own art school, first in Moscow and then in Saint Petersburg, and hired Leon Bakst and Mstislav Dobuzhinsky to teach in it. A young Marc Chagall would pass through its rooms. Repin gives her a plain dark ground and a steady, unhurried look, the fur at her shoulder catching most of the light. She was 25 the year he set her down like this.