After completion of his training at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna Janez Šubic spent the year of 1880 at home in Poljane. He kept himself busy painting portraits of his family. Realistically conceived likenesses are often framed by conventions of the Western portrait tradition. Thus the half-figure in three-quarter profile of his round-faced and red-cheeked sister Mica lost in thought is set against a dreamy landscape. She leans on a stone sill flanked by a marble pillar, her finger tucked into a book she has been reading, which traditionally alludes to intellectual activity. In spite of the dignification of her image by conventional devices, the realism of Janez Šubic’s rendering betrays a hearty country girl who has most probably grabbed a prayer-book for posing. The dignification, so effective in the portrait of his mother, resulted here in a paradox. Yet, the painter’s insistence on his realist tenets and desire to elevate the image of his relative presents us with a visualization of a warm relationship between the siblings.