Топик: Ilya Repin

Ilya Efimovich Repin was born in 1844 in a small Ukrainian town of Tchuguev

in the family of a military settler. 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. They stood on the point that art should be close to real

life. Later Repin would be closely connected with some of them, the members

of the Society of Peredvizhniky.

For his diploma work Raising of Jairus' Daughter(1871) Repin was awarded The Major Gold Medal and received a scholarship

for studies abroad. Barge Haulers on the Volga(1870-1873) was the first considerable work painted by Repin after graduation.

It immediately won recognition.

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): 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. There

were two different versions of the picture. The second one, completed in

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