Топик: Ilya Repin

an abundance of social types and human characters in the crowd .

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: Unexpected

Return (1884) and Refusal from

the Confession (1879-1885).

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.

Repin rarely painted historical paintings. The most popular in this genre

is Ivan the Terrible and his son Ivan (1895). The expressive, intense

composition and psychological insight in rendering the characters produced

an unforgettable impression on the spectators. 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.