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THE BUND BANDURA PLAYER

THE

ILYA REPIN

EXHIBITION

INTRODUCTION

AND CATALOGUE OF THE PAINTINGS

By

Dr. CHRISTIAN BRINTON

HELD AT THE

KINGORE GALLERIES

NEW YORK CITY

FIRST IMPRESSION, THREE THOUSAND COPIES

COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY" CHRISTIAN BRINTON

REDFIELD-KENDRICK-ODELL COMPANY, NEW YORK

INTRODUCTION

Photograph by Rents and Schrader, Petrograd.

( Collection of Dr. Christian Brinton )

ILYA YEFIMOVICH REPIN

ILYA REPIN IN HIS STUDIO

INTRODUCTION

By Dr. CHRISTIAN BRINTON

Le beau, c’est la vie.
Despite his rich imaginative endowment, a poignant sense
of actuality is the birthright of each and every Russian. Those
restless wanderers who started from Galicia and the upper
Dnyepr, who founded Kiev, Novgorod the Great, and Moscow,
and settled the fertile basin of the Volga, were not theorists.
The intrepid traders who in turn pushed across the Urals and
penetrated the silent forests and frozen marshes of Siberia were
not impelled by abstract ideas, by the pious frenzy of the Crusad-

ers, for instance, but by simple reasons of race pressure. From

the outset, in brief, the Russ has been brought face to face with
the severest conditions, external and internal. He has always
been a subject and a sufferer. Now overrun by the ruthless
yellow hordes of the Great Khans, and now sterilized by the
ritual of Byzantine priest, the true Slavic spirit has had little
scope for individual development.

When the Mongol yoke was at length broken by the Grand

Princes of Moscow, the situation remained much as before.
Oppression still existed, only it came from within, not from
without. The people no longer paid tribute to a khan, they
bowed to the tzar, a creature almost as Asiatic and as autocratic.
Down to the present time, in fact, matters have continued with
but slight alleviation. Though there were liberator tzars as well as
demoniac tyrants on the imperial throne, progress has remained
dubious and intermittent. The beneficient humanity of Alexan-
der II was succeeded by the drastic reactionary policy of von
Plehve and Pobiedonostsev. Each step forward seems to have
been offset by a corresponding step backward. The Tatar
spearman gave way to the Cossack with his knout. And the
blue banner of Jinghis Khan has been replaced by the red
badge of revolution and a reversion to the most sinister forms
of despotism.

Of all epochs in the spiritual evolution of Russia, the most

inspiring from the standpoint of nationalism are the memorable
years that followed the liberation of the serfs in 1861. It was
at this period that the great, passionate publicist Ghernyshevsky,
turning from Teutonic abstractions to Russian actuality, pro-
nounced the dictum that Beauty is Life, and it was at this time

also that came into being the aspiring organization known as

Land and Freedom — Zemlya i Volya. The atmosphere was
charged with hope and anticipation. Radiant ideas of progress
permeated all classes of society. On every side were signs of
regeneration, of a vast political and social awakening.

In the comparatively tardy development of contemporary

cultural expression in Russia, the novel and the play preceded
the graphic and plastic arts. For long periods the painter was
crushed beneath archaic formalism and sterile academic prece-
dent, just as in the broader relations of life all healthy, spon-
taneous initiative was repressed by influences wholly artificial
and foreign. While it is a matter of record that Gogol actually
paved the way for such masters of domestic genre as Sternberg,
Fedotov, and Perov, and that Turgenev was among the earliest
to appreciate the elegiac beauty of native Russian landscape,
it matters little which came first, and which after. The chief
point is that from this period onward each strove to depict with
increasing fidelity not only the actual physiognomy of the coun-
try itself, but that confused and questing human equation
that lay just at hand waiting to be understood and interpreted.

With that passion for absolutism so typical of the Slavic mind,

it is scant wonder that the emancipation of art should follow
rapidly upon the liberation of the serfs. On November 9, 1863,
under the magnetic leadership of Kramskoy, thirteen of the
ablest students of the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts rebelled
against soulless officialism, left the institution, and formed
themselves into an independent body. The little band of aspir-
ants struggled dubiously along for a time, but was later strong-
enough to establish the Peredvizhnaya Vystavka, or Society of

Travelling Exhibitions. And it is to this group, with its

hatred of classic and mythological themes, and its frank love
of national and local type and scene, that Russian painting
owed its subsequent vitality. It was this clear-eyed, open-
minded band of enthusiasts who first made it possible for the
Slavic artist to “go among the people,” to harken to the secret
song of the steppe. Their passionate nationalism assuredly
exceeded their artistic sensibility, yet one must never forget
that they came into being during a vigorously realistic and
utilitarian epoch, an epoch that witnessed the publication of
Pisarev’s amazing Annihilation of Aesthetics and similar dia-
tribes against the formal canons of abstract beauty. Le beau ,
c’est la vie, was in fact by some amended to read, Le laid,
c'est le beau.

Early one grey November morning nearly sixty years ago,

there knocked at the portals of the Imperial Academy of Fine
Arts in the city by the Neva, a young Cossack from the Govern-
ment of Kharkov. He was pale and shy of manner, with thick
masses of brown hair clustering about brow and ears, and under
his arm carried a portfolio of sketches. The lad had journeyed
all the way from Chuguyev, an isolated village amid the steppes
of Little Russia, his entire capital consisting of forty rubles,
and a consuming desire to become a painter. Born July 24,
1844, the son of a martial father and a gentle, solicitous mother,
Ilya Yefimovich Repin early displayed marked capacity for
graphic and plastic expression. Whilst a mere child he used to
draw pictures for his sister and her playmates, as well as cut
figures out of cardboard and model animals in wax. Though
delicate, he was sent to the communal school, 'where his mother

was a teacher, and later attended the near-by Topographical

Institute, but on the closing of the latter, he was apprenticed at
the age of thirteen to Bunakov, a local painter of sacred images.

So rapid was the boy’s progress that within three years he was
able to support himself, receiving anywhere from two to five,
and even as high as twenty rubles for a religious composition
or the likeness of some worthy villager. Pious muzhiks and
pompous rural dignitaries would come from a hundred versts
or more to see his ikoni or secure his services as ecclesiastical
decorator, the most famous of his efforts being a fervid and
dramatic St. Simeon. It was while working in the church of
Sirotin that Repin first heard of the eager, ambitious life of the
capital, with its opportunities so far beyond the limitations of
provincial endeavour. Certain of his colleagues told him not
only of the Academy, but of Kramskoy, the leader of the new
movement, who had lately paid a visit to Ostrogorsk, bringing
with him the atmosphere of the city and the ferment of fresh
social and artistic ideas.

When, at nineteen, Repin stood within the temple of art

on the Vasilyevski Ostrov, he realized that he must begin anew,
that much he had so laboriously learned by himself must be
put aside. Instead of entering the Academy directly, he spent
a year in preliminary preparation, subsisting meanwhile in the
most precarious fashion, for his financial resources were pitiably
slender. In due course at the house of a mutual friend he met
his idol, Kramskoy, whom he found to be a dark, meagre man
with deep-set, devouring eyes, who always arrayed himself in
a long black redingote. Kramskoy displayed immediate inter-
est in the young provincial’s work, and often asked him to his

home where he would expound the gospel of reality with burning

conviction. The following autumn Repin entered the Academy,
naturally finding its scholastic routine cold and listless beside
the vigorous, salutary creed of his former preceptor.

Although he remained six years at the Academy, Repin was

never in sympathy with its ideals, nor did he palpably succumb
to its traditions. Beyond everything he strove to attain verity
of vision and rendering. The grip of the actual was already
strong upon him, the potency of things seen and sincerely re-
corded exercised its own imperative appeal. So conspicuous was
the young Cossack’s talent that in 1869 he was awarded the
small gold medal, and the following term, for his Raising of
Jairus’s Daughter, he obtained the grand gold medal and a
travelling scholarship. The summer after winning his academic
laurels he went on a sketching trip down the Volga, an event
which, more than anything, served to open his eyes to that
sovereign beauty of nature and sorrowful lot of man which so
long constituted his chief inspiration. And on his return, boldly
and without compromise, Ilya Repin, at six-and-twenty, pro-
ceeded to paint from a series of first-hand studies, the initial
masterpiece of the modern Russian realistic school.

Unless you chance to be familiar with the Russian art of the

day, it is difficult to grasp the distance which separates the
Bargemen of the Volga from that which went before. At one
stroke the clear-eyed Cossack placed himself at the head of the
new movement. He went direct to nature and character, not
to the arid formalism of academic tradition. The general effect
of the canvas is compelling in its sheer veracity of observation
and statement. The composition is effective, the various types

are accurately individualized, and about these sun-scorched

burlaki, who sullenly pull on the same sagging tow-line, radiates
the genuine light of the out of doors, not the bituman and brown
sauce of the galleries. While it is impossible to overlook the
fact that the Bargemen of the Volga is what the Teutons call
a Tenclenzbild — a picture with a purpose — yet it cannot be said
that the didactic or humanitarian elements outvalue the pic-
torial appeal. Imbued with a certain deep-rooted pity for the
downtrodden, the painting stands upon its own merits as a
resolute example of realism. The artist’s triumph was in fact
complete, and his fame as sudden and widespread as that of
the young officer who, years before, had penned with searching
verity The Cossacks and Sevastopol Sketches.

Whilst his Burlaki was being exhibited in Petrograd and

Vienna, where it created a sensation at the International Exhibi-
tion of 1873, Repin had already begun that sojourn abroad
which, though it helped to mature his artistic powers, only
served to intensify his love for his native land. The European
museums, with their remote, scholastic appeal, held no message
for his objective, nature-loving temperament. He succumbed
neither to the eloquent antiquity of Rome nor to the gracious
animation of Paris. While he enjoyed the ferment of cafe and
street life, he could never quite forget those shabby, smoke-
filled student rooms where political and artistic problems were
discussed with passionate fervour, nor those great stretches of
waving plume grass, blending with the distant, low-lying hori-
zon. He did not in fact produce much during his stay abroad.
The only work of consequence to come from his brush at this
period was a touching bit of symbolistic fancy entitled Sadko

in the Wonder-realm of the Deep, in which the young painter-

exile seems to have suggested his own loneliness and home-
longing. There proved in truth to be a prophetic note to the
picture, for the artist actually returned to Russia before his
allotted time had expired, having, like Sadko himself, hearkened
to the call of Chernavushka, the appealing embodiment of the
Slavic race spirit.

Once back amid the scene of his early activities, Repin de-
voted his unflagging energy to furthering the cause of native
artistic expression. Thoroughly in sympathy with the avowedly
humanitarian and nationalistic spirit of the day, he naturally
cast his lot with the Peredvizhniki, or Wanderers, in which
organization he became a dominant figure. At first he settled
in Moscow, but later moved to Petrograd, where he shortly
accepted a professorship in the reorganized Academy which,
under the vice-presidency of Count Ivan Tolstoy, gathered
back into the fold certain of the former recalcitrants. Faithful
as he was to his duties as preceptor, Repin did not, however,
sacrifice his position as a painter, and for diversity of theme,
vigour of presentation, and fidelity to fact, few artists have
excelled the succession of canvases which he forthwith began
to offer an enthralled public. Year after year each painting was
in turn hailed as the evangel of actuality or greeted as an elo-
quent evocation of the past. At times an almost ascetic severity
of tone would tinge his palette, but perhaps the very next work
would reveal a Byzantine richness of costume, the gleam of
jewels, and the glint of polished metal. Though he would often,
as did his colleagues Vasnetzov and Surikov, glance backward
across the surging centuries for some picturesque setting, yet

never, after prentice clays, did he choose a subject that was not
thoroughly Muscovite. Whatever else it may have been, the
art of Repin was, and continued throughout his career, essen-
tially nationalistic in aim and appeal.

It is absorbing to follow from canvas to canvas the unfolding

of Repin’s pictorial power. His method is the reverse of im-
pressionism. His principal works are not the result of a single,
swift transcription of something vividly seen or spontaneously
apprehended. They are the outcome of prolonged study and
adjustment. As many as a hundred preliminary sketches were
made for The Cossacks’ Reply, of which, during an interval
of some ten years, he painted three separate versions. The
theme in fact haunted him in the same manner as the great
romanticist Bocklin lived for so long under the spell of his Island
of the Dead. Repin has never been satisfied with the result of
his efforts. He constantly strives to attain more effective group-
ing and arrangement, and more eloquent colouristic power.
While based upon direct observation, the larger realistic and
historical compositions appear to assume their final form in
response to some inner pictorial necessity.

Although many of Repin’s paintings were until recently owned

by various members of the imperial family and the nobility,
the majority found their way into the Tretyakov Gallery,
Moscow, and the Alexander III Museum in Petrograd. In the
low, rambling building across the shining Moskva nearly op-
posite the Kreml, are gathered over two thousand representa-
tive examples of contemporary Russian art, some sixty of which,
including sketches and portraits, being by Repin. Such works
as Tzarevna Sophie Confined to the Novodevichi Monastyr

during the Execution of the Streltzy, The Tzar Ivan the Terrible
and his Son Ivan Ivanovich, Nicholas the Miracle- Worker,
and The Cossacks’ Reply to the Sultan Mohammed IV, reveal
Repin at his best as an historical painter. While The Tzarevna
Sophie is scarcely more than a tense and harrowing study in
physiognomy, Ivan the Terrible and his Son challenges com-
parison with the grim Spaniards on their own ground. Con-
ceived with a masterly regard for the dramatic effect of the
scene, the canvas displays a primitive force and ferocity equalled
only by Ribera; and yet the picture is more than a mere brutal
and sanguinary episode. It conjures up as nothing in art has
ever done that dark heritage, those brooding centuries of bar-
baric splendour and fierce absolutism which form the background
of present-day Russia.

The Cossacks’ Reply, which is the best known of all Repin’s

works abroad, typifies the artist’s effective grouping, his robust
almost Flemish opulence of colour, and his characteristic gift
for portraiture. The mocking bravado of each countenance
tells the same story in a different way. You can literally hear
the derisive laughter of these liberty-loving Zaporozhtzi as the
regimental scribe pens their defiant answer while they gather
about the rude, card-strewn table. Like Gogol before him,
Repin has here rolled back a few hundred years. We are again
in the days of Taras Bulba and his pirates of the steppe, that
vast and stormy inland sea over which used to roam Kazak and
Pole, Tatar and Turk.

Yet all the while he was steeped in the past, Repin did not
lose contact with the interests and issues of his own day and
generation. Side by side with the painter of history worked

the chronicler of contemporary life and scene. The Russo-

Turkish war of 1877-78 furnished him with several themes, and
in what is known as his nihilist cycle, comprising The Conspira-
tors, The Arrest, and The Unexpected Return, he portrayed
with penetrating truth and intensity that smouldering social
volcano which has been responsible for so many decades of
heroism and heart-break. Among the works of this period are
two that merit special consideration — Vechernitzi, or, as it is
popularly called, Russian Village Dancers, and the Religious
Procession in the Government of Kursk, which was later sup-
plemented by a somewhat similar Procession. Nowhere does
Repin’s Little Russian origin betray itself more sympatheti-
cally than in his picturing of these simple-hearted merrymakers
who gather at a humble traldir to pass the night before their
wedding dancing to the tune of violin, pipe, and balalaika. In
the Procession, with its struggling, seething mass of humanity
— its obese, gold-robed priests, benighted peasants, wretched
beggars and cripples, cruel-mouthed officials, and inflated rural
dignitaries, Repin seems to have offered us a pictorial synthesis
of Russia. While a scene one might witness any day on the
dust-laden highways of the southern districts, the picture pos-
sesses a deeper significance. In essence it is a condemnation,
and, like the Burlaki, it is all the more severe because clothed
in the irrefragable language of fact.

Despite the duties as professor at the Academy, and his

numerous commissions for portraits, Repin continued to pro-
duce those larger compositions for which he is chiefly known
abroad. The Duel, which was awarded the medal of honour
at the Venice Exposition of 1897, Follow Me, Satan, What

Boundless Space, and the more recent Black Sea Pirates are
among the most important of his later works. Granting the
popular success of this particular phase of his production, not
a few of his countrymen nevertheless claim that his portraits
represent a higher level of attainment. Like Watts and like
Lenbach, Repin has painted a veritable national portrait gallery
of the leading figures of his time. One after another they gaze
out of these canvases with convincing power and verity. Here is
Tolstoy, there Pisemsky, Musorgsky, Surikov, Glinka, Ruben-
stein, and scores of statesmen, authors, generals, scientists,
and musicians.

Face to face with his subject, Repin, at his best, is a vigorous,

ready craftsman, jealous of essentials and indifferent to all that
does not directly contribute to the individuality of the sitter.
The accessories are always simple and thoroughly in character,
and nowhere has he succeeded better than in his likenesses of
the prophet of Yasnaya Polyana, whose troubled features he
has limned numerous times — behind the plough, seated at his
rude writing table, or strolling forth as a typical muzhik bare-
headed and clad in rough peasant smock. And not only has
Repin sketched, painted, and modelled Tolstoy, he has also
illustrated a number of his books. Their friendship, like that
between Bismarck and Lenbach, extended over many years,
growing even closer as the time of parting drew nigh.

Throughout his stormy, militant career Repin, like Tolstoy,

has remained temperamentally a rebel and a fighter, an enemy,
by implication at least, of Church and State. The social and
political as well as the purely artistic influence of his production
has been immense. On various occasions he has approached

the danger line of audacity, but always, instead of officially

disciplining the artist, the offending painting has been purchased
for their private edification by the tzar or some discretionary
grand duke. So open has at times been the popular approval
of some of his franker, more radical works, that they have actu-
ally been removed from public gaze within a few hours after
being placed on exhibition. At the bare feet of Tolstoy, when
the celebrated full-length standing likeness of him was first
shown, were daily deposited so many floral tributes that the
solicitous authorities were impelled temporarily to sequester
the portrait.

While possessing an ample measure of reconstructive imagi-

nation, and a notably sound and convincing historical sense,
Repin is one of those instinctive realists who are at their best
when face to face with the living model. Rarely does he wander
from the realm of definite, specific observation. The stricken,
tortured countenance of Ivan the Terrible’s dying son is virtu-
ally a portrait of poor, distraught Garshin in the final stages
of insanity and impending suicide. The confused, haunted
expression on the face of the exile in The Unexpected Return
was suggested to the painter by the appearance of Dostoyevsky
when he first came home after his Siberian immolation. The
work of Repin, like that of his fellow toilers in the field of letters
as well as art, takes its point of departure from the facts of every-
day existence. For them life as it seethed about them in its
perennial power and complexity was all sufficient.

The story of Repin’s career and achievement is the story of

Russia during the period intervening between the Russo-Turkish
war and the war with Japan. On his canvases gleams the his-

lory of his country with all its possibilities, all its eager, baffled
effort and sullen, misdirected power. His series of portraits
constitutes a pantheon of Russia’s leading spirits. His natural-
istic and historical compositions reflect with consummate
graphic resource a troubled present and a sumptuous, barbaric
past. It is to Russia, and Russia alone, that he has consecrated
the passionate fervour of his vision and the vigorous surety
of his hand. And these gifts he dedicated not to the narrow
province of aesthetics but to a broader, more beneficent appeal.
At first, as in the Burlaki, his message seemed repellent in its
unflinching verity, but gradually the stern accuser displayed
more sympathy and forbearance. Though he seems to stand
apart from his fellows, a solitary, taciturn figure, Ilya Repin
belongs to that great succession of academic realists at whose
head remained for so long the diminutive yet masterful Adolf
von Menzel. Once the essential facts are at his command,
Repin groups them with due regard for scenic effect. He com-
poses as well as observes. His art is both portraiture and pano-
rama.

The rigorous realistic and nationalistic tradition represented

alike by Repin in painting and by his contemporaries in music
and letters is the specific legacy of their day and generation.
Solidly grounded in the positivist philosophy of Bielinsky,
Chernyshevsky, and Pisarev, contemptuous of aesthetics, and
the effete passions of those who were called “the superfluous
ones,” this art does not address itself primarily to the imagina-
tion. It is in no sense a product of fancy; it is rather a convinc-
ing transcription of outward and visible fact. When Repin
came to the capital in the early sixties of the last century the

Byronic fervour of Pushkin and the eloquent heart-hunger of

Lermontov had been brusquely swept aside by the so-called
humanitarians and utilitarians. Freed from classic and mytho-
logical pretence, the artists of the day set about the task of
evolving what they considered a characteristically national
pictorial expression, and this they did with all the resources
of pen and brush, for they were polemists as well as painters.

In its every accent the artistic legacy of Ilya Repin typifies

the man’s own particular age and epoch. It definitely incar-
nates the sigmirn temporis, the spirit of the time, in the same
manner as does the fiction of Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, and the
music of Glinka, Musorgsky, and Borodin. Like their brethren
in letters and music, Repin and his colleagues of the Perednizh-
niki fought a bitter and victorious battle in the cause of nation-
alism. And yet, however formidable their achievement un-
deniably was, it proved by no means the final phase of Russian
pictorial activity. The realistic nationalism so dear to this
heroic group has in due course been superseded by a decorative
and idealistic nationalism which is equally legitimate and
equally logical. The elder men. long kept away from whole-
some, objective reality, were content with the realm of fact.
Their successors have striven to capture the sumptuous and
radiant kingdom of creative fancy.

At his summer residence at Kuokkola in Finland, situated but

a scant two hours from the capital, or in his spacious, workman-
like quarters in the upper storey at the Academy, before the
doors of which he once paused an unknown, aspiring provincial,
Ilya Repin passed the most fruitful period of his career. His
prestige as a teacher was immense, and his classes were always

crowded to capacity. Among the most prominent of his pupils

were Bilibin, Braz, Fechin, Koustodiev, Maliavin, Serov, and
three younger men who are at present in America, Djenyev, Levitt,
and Perelmann. Each and all they recall him with reverence
and affection, for their austere, laconic preceptor was by no
means devoid of humour and humanity. He used to be fond of
entertaining certain of the more promising students at his home,
but, with the increasing toll of time, and the catastrophe that
has overtaken his troubled yet aspiring country, Repin has
become an isolated figure, almost, in fact, the sole living sur-
vivor of an older order.

The past decade, which marks the final phase of Repin’s

artistic activity, has been replete with contrast. Beginning
with the brilliant success of his imposing collective display in the
picturesque Russian Pavilion at the Esposizione Internazionale
of Rome in 1911, it is closing in darkness and distress. The
Roman exhibition comprised the most comprehensive assembly
of his work ever seen outside of Russia. There were in all sixty-
two numbers, consisting mainly of portraits, drawings, and
water colours. And it may be added that the production of
the sturdy, fecund sexagenarian held its own beside the work of
many a younger man, not forgetting his former pupils Serov and
Maliavin, who on this occasion shared honours with their master.

Although, during these stressful, progressive years, he could

not fail to note that the complexion of art was rapidly changing,
the austere painter of The Cossacks’ Reply and its pendant,
The Black Sea Pirates, refused to make any sort of compromise
with what is called modernism. He remained resolutely him-
self. The shimmering radiance of impressionism broke unre-

garded about him, and as for certain more recent manifesta-

tions of artistic activity, they are as anathema to the truculent
Cossack. So stoutly does he defend himself against what he
deems the pernicious heresies of the later men that when, in
1913, his Ivan the Terrible and his Son was wantonly slashed
by a young lunatic in the Tretyakov Gallery, he took occasion
to avow that he considered the act to have been prompted by
a hatred of the older art, a desire to destroy former canons of
taste and set up new, and frankly revolutionary standards.

Shocked beyond measure by the damage done his painting,

he could scarcely believe that the deed was the work of a sporadic
individual impulse, but took it as a symbol of the general artistic
and social unrest of the day. “Who knows,” he passionately
exclaimed, “but that this affair may be the result of that mon-
strous conspiracy against the classic and academic monuments
of art which is daily gathering momentum under the influence
of endless debates and disputes regarding the newer tendencies.
These people are actually advocating the destruction of the
cherished masterpieces of the past. They are seeking in all
manner of ways to achieve their ends. They wish to break into
the temple of art and hang there their own abominations, but
I say they are creatures without reverence or religion, without
a God, and without a shred of conscience in their souls!”

The wanton act of poor frenzied Balashov had, however,

no aesthetic import. Its prompting lay deeper than any artistic
considerations, for in its own isolated, spasmodic fashion it fore-
shadowed events of a far wider significance. And it is these
events, coming with fateful swiftness, that have so overcast the
last years of the painter’s life.

The great protagonists of his partieular epoch have all gone

before him. Antokolsky, once his roommate during their ob-
scure student days, and later his rival in fame and popularity,
the veteran critic Stasov, his life-long friend and champion, his
favourite pupil Serov, upon whom the master’s mantle seemed
destined to fall — each has preceded the sturdy, tenacious Cossack
along the pathway that must shortly claim him. And, seated
in his spacious studio — once the mecca of the intelligentsia of an
entire nation — grey, shaggy, and virtually alone, he seems almost
like a soul at bay. For the vital spark that sustained him
throughout years of effort and accomplishment, and countless
bitter struggles both professional and domestic, is wellnigh ex-
tinguished.

With the same courage as before, Repin, despite his age, has
none the less endeavoured to adjust himself to the fast-changing
conditions about him. Passionately devoted as ever to the
actual and the visible, he has pictured for us a sharp, poignant
struggle in front of the Winter Palace, with the snow dyed
crimson, as was the floor in the Granovitaya Palata when Ivan
ruthlessly struck down his pleading son. He has also painted
the since deposed leader, but then idol of the Russian masses,
Kerensky, seated in the library of the tzar’s palace. Numerous
distinguished visitors have also come to see and pose for him at
Penati, his country home at Kuokkola, which is now, alas,
stripped of many of its former treasures. The few fitful years,
or months, that remain to him are in fact filled with struggle
and bitterness — tinged, as his devoted Vladimir Vasilyevich
would say — -with black and Repin red.

CATALOGUE

PAINTINGS

1 THE COSSACKS’ REPLY TO THE SULTAN

A variant upon the artist's most celebrated painting, other and

slightly different versions of which are to be found in Petrograd
and AIoscow, the earliest being dated 1890-2. The scene depicts
the Kazaks’ regimental scribe penning a defiant answer to the Sul-
tan Mohammed IV, who had demanded the surrender of Hetman
Syerko’s turbulent band in 1680. Repin made a hundred or more
different sketches for this composition, his work on the three can-
vases extending over a period of some ten years.

2 THE BLACK SEA PIRATES

Similar in character, and in a sense a pendant to the preceding

picture. The Zaporozhtzi, who had established themselves on the
Island of Setch, below Kiev, were in the habit of descending the
Dnyepr in light barks to the Black Sea, and preying on the coast
towns of the hated Mussulmans. Painted in Petrograd, 1897.
Exhibited, Paris, 1897. Size 141 X 101. Canvas. Signed, lower
left: II. Repin. Not dated.

3 BLACK SEA PIRATE TYPE (I)

Study for The Black Sea Pirates. Painted in Petrograd. Exhibit-

ed, Liljewalch’s Konsthall, Stockholm, 1919. Size 37 X 28.
Canvas. Unsigned.

4 BLACK SEA PIRATE TYPE (II)

Study for The Black Sea Pirates. Painted in Petrograd. Size

25 K X 18. Canvas. Signed and dated, upper left: II. Repin
1912.

5 BLACK SEA PIRATE TYPE (III)

Study for The Black Sea Pirates. Painted in Petrograd. Size

2114 X 18. Canvas. Signed, lower right: II. Repin. Not dated.

6 “NORTH”

The painter’s favourite dog, named “North”. Seen near Kuokkola

by the shore along the Gulf of Finland. Exhibited: Petrograd:
Esposizione Internazionale, Rome, 1911; Stockholm, 1919. Size
39 X 49} 2- Canvas. Signed and dated, lower left: I. Repin 1908.

7 THE MODEL

Repin but rarely devoted his talents to depicting the nude.

Painted in Petrograd, 1897. Exhibited: Petrograd, 1897; Lilje-
walch’s Konsthall, Stockholm, 1919. Size 48 }/% X 35. Canvas.
Signed and dated, lower left: II. Repin 1897.

8 THE ATTACK WITH THE RED CROSS NURSE

Similar scenes have occurred more than once in Petrograd during

the recent upheavals. Painted in Petrograd. Exhibited: Petro-
grad, 1917; Liljewalch’s Konsthall, Stockholm, 1919. Size 49 34
X 98N- Canvas. Signed and dated, lower left: II. Repin 1917.

9 THE BLIND BANDURA PLAYER

Not unlike certain of the Black Sea Pirate types as seen in the
larger composition. Painted in Petrograd. Exhibited: Petrograd;
Liljewalch’s Konsthall, Stockholm, 1919. Size 43 1 2 X 30 3Y
Canvas. Signed and dated, lower left; II. Repin 1918.

PORTRAITS

10 PROFESSOR A. P. BIELOPOLSKY

Distinguished mathematician, physicist, and astronomer. Mem-

ber of the Imperial Academy of Petrograd. Director of the Pol-
tava Observatory . Painted in 1884. Exhibited: Petrograd; Paris;
Liljewalch’s Konsthall, Stockholm, 1919. Size 23 H X 19. Can-
vas. Signed and dated, lower left: I. Repin 1884.

11 PROFESSOR N. I. KAREYEY

Professor of History in the Imperial University of Petrograd.

Member of the Imperial Academy, Petrograd. Member of the
Duma, 1914. Noted as an orator and public speaker. Painted in
Petrograd, 1908. Size 36}^ X 30. Canvas. Signed and dated,
lower left: I. Repin 1908.

12 THE FUTURIST

Painted in Petrograd, 1916. Exhibited: Petrograd; also Lilje-

walch’s Konsthall, Stockholm, 1919. Size 36 X 24 JV Canvas.
Signed and dated, lower right: I. Repin 1916.

13 COUNT L. N. TOLSTOY

One of Repin's numerous characteristic likenesses of the great

novelist and social reformer. The painting recalls the celebrated
full-length portrait in the Alexander III Museum, Petrograd.
Painted at Yasnaya Polyana, Tolstoy’s country estate in the
Government of Tula. Exhibited: Petrograd; also Liljewalch’s
Konsthall, Stockholm, 1919. Size 45} 2 X 33. Canvas. Signed
and postdated, lower left: I. Repin 1916.

14 SELF-PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST

He wears a beret, wide white collar, and brown jacket, and holds
a mahlstick in his right hand. The artist’s first self-portrait is
dated 1866, the same year he painted his life-long friend, the
sculptor Antokolsky, when they were fellow-students. Painted in
the artist’s studio at Kuokkola, Finland, 1917. Size 21 X 30.
Canvas. Signed and dated, lower left: II. Repin 1917.

15 ALEXANDER FYODOROVICH KERENSKY

First Minister of Justice, and subsequently Prime Minister and

Minister of War and Navy of the Provisional Government of
Russia, 1917. This portrait was painted at the request of a com-
mittee of the Premier’s admirers, in the library of the Winter
Palace, August, 1917. Size 45 X 33. Canvas. Signed and
dated lower left: I. Repin 1917.

16 THE ARTIST’S SON, YURI REPIN

The only son of the painter, wearing fur coat, and in appearance
somewhat suggesting Peter the Great as a young man. Yuri
Repin was also an artist, devoting his talents mainly to por-
traiture and landscape. Painted in the studio at Kuokkola,
Finland, 1919. Exhibited, Liljewalch’s Konsthall, Stockholm,
1919. Size 31}2 X 25. Canvas. Signed and dated, lower left:
II. Repin 1919.
PORTRAIT DRAWINGS

17 BARONESS DE PALLENBERG

Drawn in 1915. Exhibited: Stockholm, 1919. Size 30H X 23.

Paper. Signed and dated, lower centre: II. Repin 1915.

IS I. I. Y AS INSKY

Journalist, author, and art critic. Drawn in 1915. Exhibited:

Stockholm, 1919. Size 3012 X 24. Paper. Signed and dated,
lower centre: II. Repin 1915.

19 MADAME G. ANNENKOVA

The well-known authoress. Drawn in Ivuokkola, Finland, 1916.

Exhibited: Stockholm, 1919. Size 30 X 20. Paper, Signed and
dated, lower right: II. Repin 1916.

20 MADAME N. V. GRUSHKO

Drawn in 1916. Exhibited: Stockholm, 1919. Size 30 X 21

Paper. Signed and dated, lower left: II. Repin 1916.

21 STEPAN PETROVICH KRACHKOVSKY

A former officer, who was killed in 1916. Krachkovsky left his

notable art collection to the Museum of the Society for the En-
couragement of Art in Petrograd. Drawn in 1916. Size 29 pz X 22.
Paper. Signed and dated, lower right: II. Repin 1916.

22 MADAME TEFFI

Prominent contemporary humoristic writer, now living in Paris.

Drawn in 1916. Exhibited: Stockholm, 1919. Size 28 X 20.
Paper. Signed and dated, lower left: II. Repin 1916.

PORTRAIT SKETCHES

The following series of sketches were made at Kuokkola, the artist’s

studio and summer home in Finland during the years 1906, ’07, '08, and
’09 and were collectively shown at the Esposizione Internazionale, Rome,
1911, and Liljcwalch's Konsthall, Stockholm, 1919. They are all signed,
and many of them are interestingly autographed by the sitters.

23 P. P. GNEDICH

Well-known novelist, dramatist, and authority on the history of

art. Size 16 X 1332- Board. Signed and dated, lower right:
I. Repin 1906.

24 COUNTESS V. P. KANKRINA

Size 16 X 13U- Board. Signed, lower left: I. Repin. Auto-

graphed and dated, 1906.

25 L. A. SAKKETTI

Professor of aesthetics in the University of Petrograd, and Libra-

rian in the Imperial Library, Petrograd. Size 16 X 1 3 4a - Board.
Signed, lower left: I. Repin. Autographed and dated, 1906.

26 VLADIMIR VASILYEVICH STASOV

The foremost art critic of the older school in Russia. Implacable

enemy of Benois, Diaghilev, and the modernist decorative talents.
For many years Librarian of the Imperial Library, Petrograd.
Life-long friend of the artist. Size 16 X 13H- Board. Signed
and dated, lower left: I. Repin 1906, 24 July. Piquant and char-
acteristic autograph dedication.

27 COUNT IVAN TOLSTOY

Late vice-president of the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts, Petro-

grad. Minister of Education, 1906. Size 16 X 13H- Board.
Signed and dated, lower centre: I. Repin 1906, 26 August.

28 N. A. MOROZOV

Former socialist and revolutionary. Confined for twenty years

in Schlusselburg. Authority on political and economic questions.
Size 16 X 13H- Board. Signed and dated, lower right: I.
Repin 1 November 1906 “Penati.”

29 N. D. YERMAKOY

Prominent Petrograd art collector and patron of art. Size

16 X 13 Board. Signed and dated, lower right: I. Repin

1906, 29 November.

30 BORIS LAZAREVSKY

Author. Size 16 X 13pb Board. Signed and dated, lower

left: I. Repin 1906.

31 MADAME E. A. NERATOVA

Drawn in 1906. Size 16 X 13JT Board. Signed and dated,

lower left: I. Repin 1906.

32 S. P. KRACHKOVSKY

Drawn in 1907. Size 16 X 13}^. Board. Signed and dated,

lower right: I. Repin 1907, 20 April.

33 COUNT L. L. TOLSTOY
Son of Count L. N. Tolstoy. Author, lecturer. Size 16 X 13Lb
Board. Signed and dated, right centre: I. Repin 1907, 30 June.

34 V. P. STATZENKO

Size 16 X 13^2- Board. Signed and dated, lower left: I. Repin

1907, 17 October.

35 A. A. NORDMAN

Author, short story writer. Size 16 X 13R>- Board. Signed,

lower right: I. Repin; dated, lower left, 1907.

36 MADAME T. V. PORADOVSKAYA

Size 16 X 13 Lb Board. Signed and dated, lower right: I.

Repin 1907.

37 MADAME ARBUZOVA

Size 16 X 13i 2- Board. Signed, lower right: I. Repin; dated,

lower left, 1908.

38 Y. F. ZIONGLINSKY

Landscape painter. Professor in the Imperial Academy of Fine

Arts, Petrograd, and the School for the Encouragement of Fine
Arts in Russia. Size 16 X 133Y Board. Signed and dated,
lower left: I. Repin 1908.

39 MADAME K. I. RAYEVSKAYA

Size 16 X 133 Y Board. Signed and dated, lower right: II.

Repin 1909.

40 E. N. CHIRIKOV

The well-known story writer and dramatist. Author of The

Chosen People, which was successfully presented here by the
Russian dramatic company headed by Orlenev and Nazimova.
Size 16 X 133Y Board. Signed, lower centre: I. Repin. Not
dated.

41 A. I. SVIRSKY

Size 16 X 133Y Board. Signed, lower centre: I. Repin. Not

dated.

SCULPTURE

42 MADAME TARKHANOVA (Bronze)

Repin was notably fond of sculpture, having acquired a liking for

plastic expression through his early student-day association with
Antokolsky, the creator of the unforgettable statue of Mephis-
topheles . At different periods of his career, he modelled considerably .
In the studio at Penati, one used to see several interesting heads
and bust portraits showing no little vigour and facility. Portrait
head, modelled in Kuokkola, 1915. Exhibited: Liljewalch’s
Konsthall, Stockholm, 1909. Signed and dated, II. Repin Kuok-
kola 1915.

ILLUSTRATIONS

THE COSSACKS’ REPLY TO THE SULTAN

THE BLACK SEA PIRATES

BLACK SEA PIRATE TYPE (I)

'

BLACK SEA PIRATE TYPE (II)

BLACK SEA PIRATE TYPE (III)

THE MODEL

THE ATTACK WITH THE RED CROSS NURSE

PROFESSOR A. P. BIELOPOLSKY

PROFESSOR N. I. RARE YE V

COUNT L. N. TOLSTOY

ALEXANDER FYODOROVICH KERENSKY

SELF-PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST

THE ARTIST’S SON, YURI REPIN

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MADAME G. ANNENKOVA

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