Ilya Repin

Ilya Repin

Self-portrait, 1878 (State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg).
Born 5 August [O.S. 24 July] 1844
Chuguyev, Ukraine
Died September 29, 1930(1930-09-29) (aged 86)
Kuokkala, Finland
(now in Russia)
Nationality Russian Empire
Field painter, sculptor
Movement Realism

Ilya Yefimovich Repin (Russian: Илья́ Ефи́мович Ре́пин, Ukrainian: Ілля Юхимович Рєпін, (5 August [O.S. 24 July] 1844, Chuguyev, Kharkov Governorate, Russian Empire – September 29, 1930, Kuokkala, Viipuri Province, Finland) was a leading Russian[1] painter and sculptor of the Peredvizhniki artistic school. An important part of his work is dedicated to his native country, Ukraine.[2] His realistic works often expressed great psychological depth and exposed the tensions within the existing social order. Beginning in the late 1920s, detailed works on him were published in the Soviet Union, where a Repin cult developed about a decade later, and where he was held up as a model "progressive" and "realist" to be imitated by "Socialist Realist" artists in the USSR.

Contents

Life and work

Repin's country house in Zdrawneva, Belarus, now a museum.

Repin was born in the town of Chuhuiv near Kharkiv in the heart of the historical region called Sloboda Ukraine. His parents were Russian military settlers. In 1866, after apprenticeship with a local icon painter named Bunakov and preliminary study of portrait painting, he went to Saint Petersburg and was shortly admitted to the Imperial Academy of Arts as a student. From 1873 to 1876 on the Academy's allowance, Repin sojourned in Italy and lived in Paris, where he was exposed to French Impressionist painting, which had a lasting effect upon his use of light and colour. Nevertheless, his style was to remain closer to that of the old European masters, especially Rembrandt, and he never became an impressionist himself. Throughout his career, he was drawn to the common people from whom he himself traced his origins, and he frequently painted country folk, both Ukrainian and Russian, though in later years he also painted members of the Imperial Russian elite, the intelligentsia, and the aristocracy, including Tsar Nicholas II.

The itinerants

In 1878, Repin joined the free-thinking "Association of Peredvizhniki Artists", generally called "the Wanderers" or "The Itinerants" in English, who, at about the time of Repin's arrival in the capital, rebelled against the academic formalism of the official Academy. His fame was established by his painting of the Barge Haulers on the Volga, a work which portrayed the hard lot of these poor folk but which was not without hope for the youth of Russia. From 1882 he lived in Saint Petersburg but did visit his Ukrainian homeland and on occasion made tours abroad.

Religious Procession in Kursk Province, 1880-83 (Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow).

Historical and contemporary subjects

Beginning shortly before the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881, he painted a series of pictures dealing with the theme of the Russian revolutionary movement: "Refusal to Confess", "Arrest of a Propagandist", "The Meeting", and "They did not Expect Him", the last of which is undoubtedly his masterpiece on the subject, mixing contrasting psychological moods and Russian and Ukrainian national motifs. His large-scale "Religious Procession in the Province of Kursk" is sometimes considered an archetype of the "Russian national style" displaying various social classes and the tensions among them set within the context of a traditional religious practice and united by a slow but relentless forward movement.

In 1885, Repin completed one of his most psychologically intense paintings, Ivan the Terrible and his Son. This canvas displayed a horrified Ivan embracing his dying son, whom he had just struck and mortally wounded in an uncontrolled fit of rage. The visage of terrified Ivan is in marked contrast with that of his calm, almost Christlike son.

Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks to Sultan Mehmed IV of the Ottoman Empire, 1880-91 (State Russian Museum).

One of Repin's most complex paintings, Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks to Sultan Mehmed IV of the Ottoman Empire occupied many years of his life. He conceived this painting as a study in laughter, but also believed that it involved the ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity; in short, Cossack republicanism, in this particular case, Ukrainian Cossack republicanism. Begun in the late 1870s, it was only completed in 1891, and was immediately purchased by the Tsar for 35,000 roubles, an enormous amount at the time.

During his maturity, Repin painted many of his most celebrated compatriots, including the novelist Leo Tolstoy, the court photographer Rafail Levitsky, the scientist Dmitri Mendeleev, the imperial official Konstantin Pobedonostsev, the composer Modest Mussorgsky, the cellist Aleksandr Verzhbilovich, the philanthropist Pavel Tretyakov, and the Ukrainian poet and painter, Taras Shevchenko.

In 1903, he was commissioned by the Russian government to paint his most grandiose design, a 400x877 cm canvas representing a ceremonial session of the State Council of Imperial Russia.

Later life

The Repin "Penaty" Manor House-Museum in Kuokkala, now Repino.

Repin himself designed his home Penaty (literally, "the Penates") or the Roman "Household Gods", located just to the north of Saint Petersburg in Kuokkala, Grand Duchy of Finland. After the 1917 October Revolution, Finland declared independence. He was invited by various Soviet institutions to come back to his homeland but refused the invitation giving the excuse that he was too old to make the journey. During this period, Repin devoted much time to painting religious subjects, though his treatment of these was usually innovative and not traditional. With the exception of a portrait of Provisional Government head, Alexander Kerensky, he never painted anything substantial on the subject of the 1917 revolutions or the Soviet experiment that followed. His last painting, a joyous and exuberant canvas called "The Hopak", was on a Ukrainian Cossack theme. In 1930, he died in Kuokkala, Finland. After the Continuation War Kuokkala was ceded to the Soviet Union and was renamed Repino (Leningrad Oblast). The Penates are part of the World Heritage Site Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments.[3] In 1940, Penaty was opened for the public as a house museum. Alexander Glazunov's Oriental Rhapsody, Op. 29 (1889) is dedicated to Ilya Repin.

Gallery

Ivan the Terrible and his son Ivan on Friday, November 16, 1581, 1870-1873 (Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow)

Barge Haulers on the Volga, 1870-73 (State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg)

Sadko in the Underwater Kingdom, 1876 (State Russian Museum)

Apples and Leaves, 1879 (State Russian Museum)

Party 1883

Grand Duke Choosing His Bride 1885

Portrait of Leo Tolstoy 1887

St Nicholas of Myra in Lycia 1889

Portrait of Mendeleev

Portrait of Leo Tolstoy 1893

Portrait of writer Alexander Zhirkevich 1894

Wedding of Nicholas II and Alexandra Fyodorovna, 1894

Ceremonial session of the State Council 1900

Composer Modest Mussorgsky

Anton Rubinstein

Painter's daughter

Konstantin Pobedonostsev (sketch)

Sophia Alekseyevna

Afanasy Fet

Vladimir Stasov

Pavel Mikhailovich Tretyakov

Aleksey Pisemsky

Pushkin Reciting His Poem Before Old Derzhavin (1911)

17 October 1905, 1906-1911

Emperor Nicholas II (sketch)

Protodeacon, 1877 (Tretyakov Gallery)

Portrait of Professor Ivanov, 1882

Portrait of Tolstoy in peasant dress, 1901

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Ilya Yefimovich Repin - Britannica Online Encyclopedia
  2. ↑ V Marcadé - Art d'Ukraine, edition l'Age de l'Homme, 1990 Lausanne Switzerland, pg. 151 - 163
  3. ↑ Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments - UNESCO World Heritage Centre at whc.unesco.org

References

Bibliography

External links