Portrait of Virginia (Little Girl)

Frida Kahlo completed this portrait of a young Mexican girl named Virginia in 1929, the same year she completed The Bus and married Diego Rivera. The work shows a child in traditional dress standing against a simple background, holding a small doll in her hands. It belongs to the early phase of Kahlo's career when she painted commissioned portraits to earn money.

The portrait demonstrates Kahlo's solid technical skills in capturing likeness before she turned almost exclusively to self-portraiture. Virginia's dark eyes look directly at the viewer with a seriousness common in formal portraits of children from this period. The composition remains straightforward, without the symbolic complexity that would later distinguish Kahlo's mature paintings. The plain background and centered figure follow traditional portrait conventions.

Few details about the subject Virginia have survived. What the painting reveals is Kahlo's capability as a traditional portrait painter, a skill she largely abandoned as her art became more autobiographical and surreal. The work now resides in the Dolores Olmedo Collection in Mexico City, where it hangs alongside The Bus and many of the intensely personal works that would come later in her career.