Repin, Ilya

Repin, Ilya (b Chuguyev, Ukraine, 24 July [5 Aug.] 1844; d Kuokkala, Finland [now Repino, St Petersburg region], 29 Sept. 1930). The most celebrated Russian painter of his day and a central figure in his country's cultural life. Although Bryulov and Ivanov had earlier won great renown in the West with a classical and a biblical picture respectively, and Aivazovsky had gained international success with his seascapes, Repin was the first Russian painter to achieve European fame with specifically Russian themes. In addition to portraits of a host of celebrities, he painted colourful scenes of Russian history, pictures of peasant life, and contemporary subjects in which he attacked political abuses and social ills; his friend Tolstoy said that he ‘depicts our national way of life much better than any other artist’. His main training was at the St Petersburg Academy, where he won a scholarship that enabled him to travel in Europe, 1873–6. He spent most of this time in Paris and returned there several times, becoming a highly respected figure in France (he was made a member of the Legion of Honour in 1901). Repin had mixed feelings about the Impressionists, who became a great artistic talking point during his scholarship period in Paris (their first group exhibition was in 1874). He admired their lively use of light and colour but thought their work was lacking in serious moral purpose. The importance he attached to such moral values was clearly evident in his first great success, Barge Haulers on the Volga (1870–3, Russian Mus., St Petersburg), which won a medal at an international exhibition in Vienna in 1873. He showed his social conscience in revealing the appalling working conditions of the barge haulers, but the picture also celebrates their dignity and fortitude.

In 1878–83 Repin lived in Moscow, then settled in St Petersburg, but he spent a good deal of time travelling in remote areas of Russia to gather material for his paintings. He was at his peak in the 1880s, when he produced most of his finest works, including The Zaporozhian Cossacks Writing a Mocking Letter to the Turkish Sultan (1880–91, Russian Mus.), a characteristically full-blooded evocation of Russian history; They Did Not Expect Him (1884, Tretyakov Gal., Moscow), showing the unexpected return of a political exile from Siberia; and Modest Mussorgsky (1881, Tretyakov Gal.), which is often considered his greatest achievement as a portraitist. Although he sometimes worked painstakingly for years on his big historical paintings, the portrait of Mussorgsky was a brilliant impromptu performance, produced in a few hours during a temporary improvement in the health of the dying composer; Mussorgsky himself referred to the ‘fearsome sweeps’ of Repin's brush.

In 1894 Repin began teaching at the St Petersburg Academy and became a revered figure among his pupils. Following the 1905 Revolution he resigned his post as he did not want to be associated with a government he considered ‘behind the times, stupid and ready for a complete downfall’. He returned in 1906 after pleas from his pupils but resigned for good in 1907. In 1899 he had bought a country estate at Kuokkola, which is near St Petersburg but at this time was part of Finland. After Finland declared independence from Russia in 1917 and closed the border, Repin found himself cut off from his native country and never returned. He remained highly respected there, however, and after Stalin's imposition of Socialist Realism in the 1930s he was extolled as an ‘artist-democrat’ and held up as a model for Soviet painters. Kuokkola is now part of Russia again and has been renamed Repino in his honour; his home there is now a museum dedicated to him.