Lytras introduced national characteristics into genre painting, with which he was intensively preoccupied from the 1870s on. Dating from that period, The Orphan Girl in the A. G. Leventis Foundation Collection went on display for the first time in an Athenian jewellery store in 1876, before being shown at the Exposition Universelle in Paris two years later.

The painting depicts a young woman with long brown hair in a white petticoat, mending a black mourning dress, seated on a chest in a humble interior. In the niche on the left there are two long white candles, tied with black cloth, and a loaf of Eucharist bread, alluding to loss and orphanhood. The modest, bashful figure exemplified the model of the typical Greek maid and was regarded in this way by contemporary criticism. Demonstrating his mastery in handling white, Lytras had only to use a minimum of means to achieve the sparse, low-key effect he sought, focusing on conveying the sitter’s inner state.

Medea, on the other hand, an oil painting as dynamic as a sketch, probably dates from the 1860s and the period of Lytras’ studies in Munich. Drawing his inspiration from Greek mythology, here he captured the dramatic moment when Medea killed her own children to revenge her husband’s betrayal.