Дама в голубом

The woman in the old-fashioned blue dress was a painter herself, Elizaveta Martynova, who had trained beside Somov at the Petersburg Academy. By the time he finished her portrait she was seriously ill with tuberculosis, and she disliked the result. She asked him not to sell it, even asked him to burn it, saying she did not want strangers looking into her soul. Somov worked on it for three years and dressed her in the manner of a century before, alone in a fading park. He sold it to the Tretyakov Gallery all the same. Martynova died in 1904, a few years after the last sitting, at the age of 36.