Ilya Yefimovich Repin
(1844-1930)
Ilya Yefimovich Repin (1844-1930), was a Russian painter, born in Chuguyev
(Ukraine) and grew up with a Cossack heritage. He is considered the outstanding realist of his generation. Although he was a good drafter and a skilled colorist, he was known mainly for his subject matter: His deeply moving scenes of common people were an indictment of the tsarist regime.
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As a boy he was trained as an icon painter. At the age of 19 he
entered the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts.
His arrival to the capital coincided
with an important event in artistic life of the 60s, the so-called "Riot of
the Fourteen", when 14 young artists left the Academy having refused to use
mythological subjects for their diploma works.
- USSR 1969. Ilya Y. Repin, self-portrait.
- USSR 1957. 200th anniversary of the Academy of Arts. Inserted are
portraits of the Russian painters Brullow, Repin and Zurikov.
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life. Later Repin would be closely connected with some of them, the
members of the Society of Peredvizhniky.
His painting "Volga Boatmen" -- also known as "Barge
Haulers" -- (1873, Russian State Museum, Saint Petersburg), showing bargemen harnessed together like beasts of burden,
was his first considerable work painted after graduation, and it
immediately made him famous.
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For his diploma work Raising
of Jairus' Daughter (1871) Repin was awarded The Major Gold Medal
and received a scholarship for studies abroad. He went on to paint large historical subjects, as well as thoughtful portraits of the great Russian composers and
writers, and his work became the model for mid-20th-century Soviet socialist realism. He
was one of the
most noted members of the 19th Century Society for Travelling Artists, also
known as "The Wanderers."
In 1873, Repin went abroad. For some months he had been
traveling in Italy and then settled and worked in Paris up to 1876. It was in
Paris that he witnessed the first exhibition of the Impressionists, but, judging
by the works created then and by his letters home, he didn't become the ardent
follower of this new Paris school of painting, though he didn't share the
opinion of some of his country-men who saw a dangerous departure from “the
truth of life” in Impressionism.
After returning to Russia Repin settled in Moscow. He was a
frequent visitor in Abramtsevo – the country estate of Savva
Mamontov, one of the most famous Russian patrons of art. It was a very
fruitful period in his creative activity. During 10-12 years Repin created the
majority of his famous paintings. In 1877, he started to paint religious
processions: Krestny
Khod (Religious Procession) in Kursk Gubernia (1880-1883). The
composition was based on the dramatic effect of different attitude of the
participants of the procession to the wonder-working icon carried at the head of
the procession.
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Ilya Repin: Easter Procession in Kursk. There are two different versions of
this painting; the second
one, completed in 1883, became the most popular. This painting has not appeared
on a stamp, but as it is one of the artist's major works, I have
chosen to show it here.
A series of paintings devoted to the revolution theme deserves
special attention. The artist was no doubt interested in creating the character
of a fighter for social justice. The range of social, spiritual and
psychological problems, which attracted Repin, is revealed in his works: The
Arrest of the Propagandist (1878), Unexpected
Return (1884) and Refusal
from the Confession (1879-1885).
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USSR 1967. Ilya Repin: The Arrest of the Propagandist.
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USSR 1969. Ilya Repin: Unexpected Return.
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USSR 1969. Ilya Repin: Refusal from the Confession.
Repin is the author of many portraits, which are an essential
part of his artistic heritage. Repin never painted faces, he painted real
people, managing to show his models in their natural state, to reveal their way
of communicating with the world: Portrait
of the Composer Modest Musorgsky (1881), Portrait
of the Surgeon Nikolay Pirogov (1881), Portrait
of the Author Alexey Pisemsky (1880), Portrait
of the Poet Afanasy Fet (1882), Portrait
of the Art Critic Vladimir Stasov (1883), and Portrait
of Leo Tolstoy (1887) and many others are distinguished by the power
of the visual characteristic and the economy and sharpness of execution.
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Ilya Repin: Portrait of Leo Tolstoy.
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USSR 1957. Ilya Repin: Portrait of the Art Historian and
Critic V.V. Stasov. This stamp exists also with a face value of 1 Rubel,
and black-blue colour. On the original painting Repin's signature appears in
the upper left corner, where the year 1824 is printed on the stamp.
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USSR 1965. Ilya Repin: Portrait of the Soviet painter, V.A. Serov.
Repin rarely painted historical paintings, but the most famous
-- and one of the most popular in
this genre -- is Ivan the Terrible and his son Ivan (1895), showing Ivan
the Terrible after mortally wounding his son while in a rage. The expressive,
intense composition and psychological insight in rendering the characters, the
lunacy in Ivan's bloodshot eyes when holding his dying son bathed in blood,
makes an unforgettable impression on the spectators. The painting belongs
to the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow. The image shown here is a small fragment,
showing only the central portion of the huge painting.
The
prominent Russian historian, Nikolay Kostomarov, observed a striking similarity
between Ivan the Terrible and Nero, despite the differences of circumstances and
environment. Like Nero, Ivan was corrupted in his childhood years. Both Nero
under the guidance of Seneca, and young Ivan under the guidance of Silvester the
Monk, accomplished many commendable things, but finally, when both got rid of
their mentors, they proceeded to out-Herod Herod in depravity and sadism.
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In their cruelty, both favoured the bizarre, the mannered,
the theatrical. Nero started out by killing his mother; Ivan did not kill
his mother -- she died when he was still an infant -- but made up for it
by killing his son towards the end of his life. Nero set Rome on fire, and
then tortured innocent Christians, trying to make them confess to arson in
his "court of justice"; Ivan razed Novgorod to the ground and
killed many more Russian Christians than Nero had Roman ones. He, too,
accused his victims of heinous crimes which he, the stern yet just
arbiter, set out to investigate.
Nero went to Greece to fool around with the arts and sciences, leaving
Rome at the mercy of his underlings; Ivan fled to Alexandrovskaya Sloboda,
where he played the monk while his oprichniki [elite guardsmen]
plundered Rus. Both were greedy and self-interested. They devastated the
provinces and harboured a particular hatred: Nero for heathen temples,
Ivan for Christian monasteries. Nero boasted that he was the only Roman
emperor who could reach the limits of arbitrariness; Ivan carried on about
the enormity of his authority as a tsar.
- Ilya Repin: "Ivan the Terrible and his son Ivan".
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Nero was a coward and did not have it in him to kill himself when the moment
had come; Ivan did not have to save himself from what he did to so many others.
Nero took pride in his talents as a poet, singer and artist; Ivan never missed
an opportunity to air his gift as a rhetorician, theologian, historian -- in
a word, he loved to philosophise. Ironically, the Tsar of Muscovy was
luckier in this respect than the Emperor of Rome. As far as we know, Nero's
literary and artistic efforts were quickly forgotten. The tyrant of Moscow, on
the other hand, is commended to this day for his "wit, humour, erudition,
and logic" and recognised as "the foremost writer of his
time".
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Another popular work of
the genre is The
Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks to Sultan Mahmoud IV (1880-1891).
The faithfully rendered spirit of the Zaporoguus freemen, who, according to the
artist, had a particularly strong sense of “liberty, equality and
fraternity” undoubtedly gives the picture its significance.
The contemporaries
saw it as a symbol of the Russian people throwing off their chains.
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Further Ilya Repin has painted the below portrait of the
Ukrainian painter and national poet Taras Shevshenko (1814-1867). Ukraine and Belarus have issued two stamps commemorating Ilya
Repin at his 150th birth anniversary. Particularly the Ukrainian issue is
interesting, as it contains a sketch to the above painting of the Zaporozhian
Cossacks' writing a letter to the Turkish sultan.
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USSR 1964. Ilya Repin: Portrait of Taras Shevshenko.
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Belarus 1994. Se-tenant set. Painting "Belorusian"
by I.Y. Repin, and House-Museum of the painter in the village Zdravnevo, Vitebsk
region.
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Ukraine 1994. Repin's 150th birth anniversary, with a
self-portrait, and a sketch to painting "Reply of the Zaporozhian
Cossacks to Sultan Mahmoud IV", see immediately above.
Although Repin's creative active continued into the 20th
century, the last quarter of the 19th century was the best period in his work. After the
Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 he lived and worked until his death in 1930 at his estate Penates in
present-day Finland.
Repin's paintings have appeared on stamps from the Soviet Union,
Russia, Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine, Belarus, Czechoslovakia, and
Madagascar, altogether 30+ stamps. Most of these show the "Volga
Boatmen", and Repin's self-portrait (the Volga Boatmen not less than three
times from the Soviet Union), so I have tried to select the largest variation
possible on this page.
Sources and links:
