The portrait of Sophia Mikhailovna Dragomirova was created by Valentin Serov — the painter who gave the world ‘Girl with Peaches’. This work was not commissioned — quite on the contrary, Serov asked the model for her permission to be portrayed, so inspired he was by her appearance.

Serov met Sophia Dragomirova, the daughter of a Russian General Mikhail Dragomirov, at the workshop of his mentor Ilya Repin. This meeting was accidental, which is evident from Dragomirova’s letter to Igor Grabar:

That is how both Valentin Serov and Ilya Repin happened to portray 18-year-old Sophia Dragomirova.

The portraits — both by Serov and Repin — were placed next to each other in the Dragomirov house. In the early 1890s, guests to the general’s residence were eager to see for themselves the portrait by the famous Repin. They would praise the work highly only to indifferently browse the second portrait asking for its painter’s name out of politeness. But little by little Serov would win the hearts of the audience by his excellent level of painting, the impressionistic manner of brush strokes and the skill of rendering the models’ appearances perfectly right. Over time, the visitors of the hospitable home of Dragomirovs would rather start asking, ‘Is it true that you have here the wonderful portrait of Sophia Mikhailovna by Serov? ’ — and only after that they would pay attention to Repin’s painting.

Having once met Sophia at his mentor’s workshop, Valentin Serov would keep up the acquaintance. In 1900, when he was already famous, he painted her in watercolor (nowadays this painting belongs to the State Tretyakov Gallery).

The portrait had stayed for a long time at the Dragomirov residences in Saint Petersburg and Kiev before it was given to Sophia’s friend — Zinaida Ratkova-Rozhnova. Later it would be housed by the State Tretyakov Gallery, and then transferred to the museum of Kazan in 1927. The portrait of Sophia Dragomirova by Repin is held at the State Russian Museum.