Vasily Surikov painted his Portrait of Young Lady in 1906. We don’t know who is on the portrait. It is believed that this is not a specific young lady, but a collective image of a Russian Siberian beauty. The painting is made in pastel technique rarely used by the artist. Vasily Surikov painted it in Samara and gave it as a present to the local doctor Mikhail Nazarov. There’s an inscription on the portrait: To dear Dr. Mikhail Pavlovich Nazarov as a memento.

The young lady is pictured wearing Russian folk costume – blue cord dress and white canvas shirt. She has a povoinik on her head. It’s an old headdress of married Russian women in Northern provinces of the Russian Empire. Povoinik was made as a canvas cap with a flat, hard top and a soft cap-band. A wide cap-band – part of the headpiece that lies on the head, – is tied with ribbons on the back of the head. The front of the povoinik is decorated with a firm forehead piece with braiding, covering the forehead. Over the povoinik the lady has a red kerchief with ornaments.

Vasily Surikov was born in 1848 in Krasnoyarsk. The artist came from an ancient Cossack family. As a child, he attended the Krasnoyarsk district school and learned the basics of drawing there. Pyotr Kuznetsov, local gold producer and philanthropist, sent Surikov to study in the capital of the Russian Empire. In 1868, Vasily Surikov came to St. Petersburg and entered the Academy of Fine Arts. His first painting – The View of the monument to Peter I on the Senate Square – defined the style of the artist for his entire life. Vasily Surikov is recorder in the history of Russian painting as a master of historical genre.

In 1881, Vasily Surikov joined the Itinerants who refused to pursue the academic painting. He traveled with them all over the country and organized exhibitions of his works in different cities. Soon he became a famous artist and received the title of Academician of Painting. Pavel Tretyakov, a patron of the arts, bought Surikov’s paintings for his collection.

Vasily Surikov suffered from lingering pneumonia. He would often come to Samara for koumiss treatment. He painted his ‘Portrait of Young Lady’ during one of those visits. The artist felt bad and was treated by Dr. Mikhail Nazarov. In gratitude for that, Vasily Surikov presented him his painting as a gift. In Samara, the painter was friends with the Shihobalovs who were of the merchant class. Surikov’s paintings reposited in the Samara Regional Ethnography Museum were part of their home collection.