The Portrait of Ekaterina Ivanovna Karzinkina

Ekaterina Ivanovna Karzinkina was portrayed by Tropinin in 1838, the same productive late period that also yielded the Bolotov centenary portrait. The canvas, now at the Tatarstan State Museum of Fine Arts in Kazan, documents the spread of Tropinin's reputation beyond Moscow to the provincial cities of the Volga region, where educated merchant families and minor nobility sought portraits in the national Romantic tradition he embodied. Karzinkina's portrait belongs to the female portraiture that constituted the backbone of Tropinin's practice throughout his career — women of the Moscow and provincial bourgeoisie whom he painted with the warm, uncondescending attention that made him the preferred painter of a social class that the more aristocratic Saint Petersburg tradition often ignored or condescended to.

Oil on canvas in Tropinin's late-period female portrait manner: warm golden light, transparent shadow glazes, confident broad strokes in the dress and background. The face receives the most careful attention, with multiple thin layers achieving the luminous skin tone that was his consistent aim in female portraiture.