Ilya Yefimovich Repin (5 August [O.S. 24 July] 1844 – 29 September 1930) was a Ukrainian-born Russian painter. He became one of the most renowned artists in Russia in the 19th century. His major works include Barge Haulers on the Volga (1873), Religious Procession in Kursk Province (1880–1883), Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan (1885), and Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks (1880–1891). Repin is also known for the revealing portraits he made of the leading Russian literary and artistic figures of his time, including Mikhail Glinka, Modest Mussorgsky, Pavel Tretyakov, and especially Leo Tolstoy, with whom he had a long friendship.
Repin was born and brought up in Chuguev, then part of Russia. His father had served in an Uhlan regiment in the Russian army and then sold horses. Repin began painting icons at age sixteen. He failed at his first effort to enter the Imperial Academy of Arts in Saint Petersburg but went to the city anyway in 1863, audited courses, and won his first prizes in 1869 and 1871. In 1872, he presented his drawings at the academy after a tour along the Volga River. Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich awarded him a commission for a large scale painting, The Barge Haulers of the Volga, which launched his career. Repin spent two years in Paris and Normandy, seeing the first Impressionist expositions and learning the techniques of painting in the open air.
Repin suffered one setback in 1885 when his history portrait of Ivan the Terrible killing his own son in a fit of rage caused a scandal, resulting in the painting being removed from exhibition. But this was followed by a series of major successes and new commissions. In 1898, with his second wife, he built a country house, which he called "The Penates" ('Penaty' in Russian) in Kuokkala, Viipuri Province, Finland, where they entertained Russian society. The house and garden now constitute the Penaty Memorial Estate, a museum and UNESCO World Heritage Site.
In 1905, following the repression of street demonstrations by the Imperial government, Repin quit his teaching position at the Academy of Arts. He welcomed the February Revolution in 1917 and had fluctuating opinions on the October Revolution. Later that year, Finland declared its independence from Russia. Following this event, he was unable to travel to Saint Petersburg (renamed Leningrad), even for an exhibition of his own works in 1925. Repin died in 1930 at the age of 86 and was buried at the Penates.
Ilya Yefimovich Repin was born on 5 August [O.S. 24 July] 1844 in Chuguev, a provincial town then part of Kharkov Governorate, Russian Empire, and now part of Ukraine. His father, Yefim Vasilyevich Repin (1804–1894), was a military settler who served in an Uhlan regiment of the Imperial Russian Army. He fought in the Russo-Persian War of 1826–1828, the Russo-Turkish War of 1828–1829, and the Hungarian campaign of 1849. When his father retired from the army in the early 1850s, after 27 years of service, he became an itinerant merchant selling horses. Although some sources referred to Repin as having Cossack or Ukrainian ancestry, he had none; instead, he identified as a Russian born in Little Russia – the name applied to Ukraine at the time. His ancestors were ethnic Russians who served in the streltsy and were sent to Chuguev to assist local Cossacks. Despite this, he felt affinity with both the Cossacks and Ukrainians.
Repin's mother, Tatyana Stepanovna Repina (née Bocharova; 1811–1880), was also the daughter of a soldier. She had family ties to noblemen and officers; the Repins had six children and were moderately well-off. He had two younger brothers: one who died at the age of ten, and another named Vasily.
In 1855, at the age of eleven, he was enrolled at the local school where his mother taught. He showed a talent for drawing and painting, and when he was thirteen, his father enrolled him in the workshop of Ivan Bunakov, an icon painter. He restored old icons and painted portraits of local notables. At the age of sixteen, his skill was recognized, and he became a member of an artel, or cooperative of artists, the Society for the Encouragement of Artists, which traveled around Voronezh province to paint icons and wall paintings.
Repin had much higher ambitions. In October 1863, he competed for admission to the Imperial Academy of Arts in the capital, Saint Petersburg. He failed in his first attempt, but persevered, rented a small room in the city, and took courses in academic drawing. In January 1864 he succeeded and was allowed, without fee, to attend classes. His brother Vasily also followed him to Saint Petersburg.
At the academy he met the painter Ivan Kramskoi, who became his professor and mentor. When Kramskoi founded the first independent union of Russian artists, Repin became a member. In 1869, he was awarded a gold medal second-class for his painting Job and His Brothers. He met the influential critic Vladimir Stasov and painted a portrait of Vera Shevtsova, his own future wife.
In 1870, with two other artists, Repin traveled to the Volga River to sketch landscapes and studies of barge haulers (the Repin House in Tolyatti and the Repin Museum on the Volga commemorate this visit). When he returned to Saint Petersburg, the quality of his Volga boatmen drawings won him a commission from Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich for a large scale painting on the subject. The painting, Barge Haulers on the Volga was completed in 1873. The following year, he was awarded a gold medal first-class for his painting The Resurrection of the Daughter of Jairus.
In May 1872, he married Vera Alexeievna Shevtsova (1855–1917). She joined him on his travels, including a trip to Samara, where their first child, Vera, was born. They had three other children; Nadia, Yuri, and Tatyana. The marriage was difficult, as Repin had numerous affairs, while Vera cared for the children. They were married for fifteen years.
In an 1872 letter to Stasov, Repin wrote: "Now it is the peasant who is the judge and so it is necessary to represent his interests. (That is just the thing for me, since I am myself, as you know, a peasant, the son of a retired soldier who served twenty-seven hard years in Nicholas I's army.)" In 1873, Repin traveled to Italy and France with his family. His second daughter, Nadezhda, was born in 1874.
Repin's painting Barge Haulers of the Volga, shown at the Vienna International Exposition, brought him his first International attention. It also earned him a grant from the Academy of Fine Arts which allowed him to make an extended tour of several months to Austria, then Italy, and finally in 1873, to Paris. He rented an apartment in Montmartre at 13 rue Veron, and a small attic studio under a mansard roof at number 31 on the same street.
He remained in Paris for two years. He described his subjects as "the principal types of Parisians, in the most typical settings." He painted the street markets and boulevards of Paris, and especially the varied faces and costumes of the Parisians of every class. His major Russian work created in Paris was Sadko (1876), a mystical allegory of an undersea kingdom, which included elements of Art Nouveau. He gave the young heroine a Russian face, surrounded by a strange and exotic setting. He wrote to his friend the civic Stasov: "This idea describes my present situation, and perhaps, the situation of all of our Russian art". In 1876, his Sadko painting won him a place in the Russian Academy of Fine Arts.
He was in Paris in April 1874, when the First Impressionist Exhibition was held. In 1875, he wrote to Stasov about "The liberty of the "impressionalists", Manet, Monet et the others, and their infantile truthfulness." In 1876, he painted a portrait of his wife Vera in the exact style of Berthe Morisot's portrait by Édouard Manet. as a tribute to Manet and Morisot. Though he admired some impressionist techniques, especially their depictions of light and color, he felt their work lacked moral or social purpose, key factors in his own art.