Portrait de Poliksena Stepanovna Stassova

Repin painted this in 1879, a year after Russian women had won something long refused them: their own higher courses in St Petersburg. The Bestuzhev Courses, opened in 1878, were the first place a woman in the empire could pursue a university education. The sitter, Poliksena Stasova, belonged to the family at the heart of that fight. Her husband Dmitry was a well-known liberal lawyer, his brother Vladimir the critic who championed Repin's circle, and their sister Nadezhda led the new women's courses. Poliksena herself had taught in the Sunday schools set up years earlier to bring literacy to working women. Repin gives her a plain black dress and a white collar, and a steady, unhurried look back at him.