Niña con melocotones

In the summer of 1887 Serov was 22 and staying at Abramtsevo, the country estate near Moscow where the industrialist Savva Mamontov gathered painters, singers and writers. The girl at the table is Mamontov's daughter Vera, then 11, who had just run in and sat down with the peaches. Serov kept her there for about two months of sittings, chasing the ordinary daylight coming through the window behind her. He was reacting against the dark, heavy portraiture he had grown up with, and wanted paint that felt as fresh and quick as the moment itself. The peaches, oddly, were grown in the estate's own hothouses, a small luxury of that circle. Vera would die of pneumonia at 32.