I.E. Repin painted the Dragonfly at his dacha in the village of Martyshkino near St. Petersburg. The portrait depicts Vera Repina, the artist’s daughter. The master’s portraits of children are characterised by his admiration for their childish spontaneity and careless joy of being. This makes Repin’s treatment of children’s images akin to that of impressionists. This painting produces the impression of a life scene accidentally witnessed by the artist. The foreground features a girl sitting on the dark crossbar of a lath fence. Behind her, there is a transparent blue sky with light misty clouds and a faded meadow’s blades of grass painted with a thin brush. The sun’s reflexes on the girl’s blueish dress seem to attempt to melt the cloth in the infinite sun-imbued space. The child’s free lively pose, her hat, amusingly tied under the chin with a black ribbon, the plashes of sunlight playing on the girl’s face and neck, her whole ardent appearance seem to draw us into a wonderful world of childish impressions and dreams. The artist created an unforgettable image of childhood full of delight and admiration aroused by the beauty of life. As Repin put it in one of his letters to P.M. Tretyakov: "The girl under the sun should be called Dragonfly: she matches this name both in terms of colour, and movement, and pose".
State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow