Ilya Efimovich Repin
Russian, 1844-1930
Portrait of Nadya, 1890
oil on canvas
39 x 24 ¾ in.
SBMA, Gift of Dr. M.N. Beigelman
1963.46
Self-Portrait of Repin painted in 1887
RESEARCH PAPER
A need for a change in the Russian art field was pressing by the beginning of the 19th century. Russian art had become ingrained with the uninventive, repetitious use of the traditional mythological themes, Biblical messages, Italian Baroque, and the old Church Slavonic. The art form was reserved as an exclusive province of the nobility. This attitude was firmly entrenched by the Academicians in the long-heralded, all-powerful St. Petersburg Academy of Art founded by Catherine the Great in 1774. Only a great sensation could disrupt the courtly, bureaucratic system.
The thrust for the new Russian art of the 19th Century came in 1863 with the Academy’s decision to set the theme of "Odin in Valhalla" as the subject for the annual gold medal award. Thirteen students were so angered with this choice of a theme completely divorced from reality that they resigned from the Academy in 1870 and under the leadership of Ivan Nicolaevich Kramskoi (1837-1887) formed the Society for Traveling Exhibitions, better known as The Wanderers. Also termed the Peredvizhniki Movement, this group insisted on detailed studies of everyday life styles of the Russian people and of their past. Portraiture of these people continuously seen in the streets—merchants, officials, clerks, urban middle class, peasantry—and genre painting were characteristic.
The Wanderers’ intention was to interpret art as an active force in the cause of social reform by laying emphasis on traditional Russian life styles and on sympathy for the common man. Both concepts directly refuted the Academy’s beliefs.
Since the time of Peter the Great all products of Russia had been considered barbarous and boorish; culture meant foreign objects. 19th century Russian art was mostly founded on the momentum of building a new national culture based on the realities of the Russian condition as exemplified by the Slavophiles. The discovery of a text of the Russian medieval epic "Lay of Igor’s Men" (1775) encouraged the Slavophile concept as well as renewing icon studies in the middle 1880s. The Wanderers were not the direct innovators of the Slavophile movement since they did not totally reject Western culture and economic patterns, they did however, feel that Russia had a unique destiny upon which to focus.
The cradle of the modern movement can be traced to The Wanderers colony of artists brought together by the railroad tycoon Savva Mamantov on his estate, Abramtseva, near Moscow. He surrounded himself with the most progressive personalities of his day who together constituted the first challenge to sovereign St. Petersburg’s Academy of Art. This made Moscow the main art center. Instead of the aristocracy, the patrons were Moscow merchants like Mamantov. Another immediate supporter was P. M. Tretyakov who bought from these artists for thirty years, gave his collection to Moscow in 1892, and founded the Tretyakov Gallery, the first museum to devote itself entirely to Russian works.
Born of humble origins in the Ukraine, Ilya Efimovich Repin (1844-1930) was initially an icon painter. He studied under Kramskoi and in 1871 won the prestigious Academy gold medal for "Raising of Jairus’s Daughter." While at the Academy he also began "Barge Haulers on the Volga" (1870-1873), which was an overwhelming success and one of his finest works. Repin never confined his pictorial renderings within the bounds of narrative interpretation but included great social comment.
While not one of the original Wanderers, Repin did personify their ideals not only in art but also in his philosophy. Joining neither the fierce emphasis toward Russian antiquity (Slavophiles) nor the totally Western innovations, he stayed away from the differing politics. In an age of artistic turmoil, he would only express opinions and sympathies through subject matter. He was considered the greatest artist and chief exponent of Russian realism, rising to become the outstanding painter of the period. Repin joined the Peredvishniki in 1873 and was a regular contributor with his summers spent at Abramtseva.
Repin’s contemporaries compared him with the French realist Courbet. Courbet was also very concerned with depicting the theme of “the people”. Courbet in his "Stonebreakers" shows the triumph of human flesh through expressive representation of toil. However, his display of human sympathy is not as complete as that of Repin—the faces are not shown.
In "Peasant Woman at Church" the German painter Liebl gave another interpretation of realism. Liebl painted every detail of the human showing a keenness of vision yet leaving merely an observation rather than a living being. Repin was able to give a more complete, well-synthesized picture of living human beings. This Russian understanding of realism was in this way quite unlike Courbet and Liebl.
Repin pursued a career between the official and upper class portraitist and the student of humbler conditions. In the 1880s he turned to historical painting in his principal works, "Ivan the Terrible with His Son Ivan" and "They Did Not Expect Him." The latter work, depicting the return of a family member from a Siberian prison camp, caused tremendous furor as well as reviving painting of middle class interiors.
Repin was at his best as a portraitist. He made his reputation in St. Petersburg painting every prominent artist, painter, writer, scientist, and statesman as well as memorializing important government events. His portraits have a striking likeness yet are undisturbed by psychological penetration and are unalleviated by the elegance often found in those of fashionable sitters. His full ability was displayed with a living model in showing understanding and compassion. His overriding interest in people led him to devote most of his time to painting his contemporaries, most frequently his neighbor Leo Tolstoy and members of his own family. Much of his work was done in friendship, as the sitter pleased him. The most distinctive feature of his work was neither compassion nor color but his attitude toward the sitter—the way he regarded him, probed his personality, and forced the viewer to read his own story of the sitter.
The Repin work in the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, "Portrait of Nadya" (also called "Portrait of the Artist’s Daughter"), catches much of the artist’s overall style. The oil on canvas is dated 1890 and shows his daughter Nadya on a backless seat, one hand clasping the stool’s arm, the other hand in a relaxed fist on the lap of her black print dress with red inset neckline. Her straightforward gaze is both attentive and intelligent.
Repin makes us look deep into Nadya’s personality…but gradually. No extremes are noted on her face, yet a changing expression is evidenced. Her pose is neither artificial nor placed strictly for external effectiveness. “The trustful attitude to the human being displayed by Repin is not to be found among other 19th Century painters. He is ready to assure us that it is sufficient to glance at a human painting to penetrate the essential self.” (Hamilton, p. 257)
Paris held little appeal on Repin’s first visit in 1875. His studies of Parisian men and women for his "Paris Café" (1875) rival the oblique attachment of Degas’s modified realism of those years. However, after his second visit in 1883, his brush stroke loosened and his light intensified. Note in the "Portrait of Nadya" how discriminating the brush work is in avoidance of superfluous realistic detail. A contemporary of the French Impressionists, he slowly adopted the Impressionist palette of light play and tonal qualities but never accepted the broken color of Monet.
Nadya’s figure is lined with broad strokes while her face is conveyed by more gentle shading. The lines are not broken but softened to smoothness and roundness giving a finished, harmonious character. This concentration on her face, which entails the ability of distributing attention at will on essentials, is a characteristic of Repin’s.
By including much of Nadya’s figure and allowing the light flow on the folds of her dress, Repin gives the viewer a sense her vitality. Nadya, already looking a bit tired of the sitting, could easily rise to leave our view. Her hands echo this willingness to rise, while the yellow and greenish blend of the background enhances the feeling of restlessness and youth. Repin’s colors are not overly fresh, but he handles strong colors well. This ability stems from his early work with icons.
Ilya Efimovich Repin continued his work in academic realism in later years. His works indicate a growing awareness of Western developments. Considered to have tremendous talent, excellent discernment of personality, sense of color, and dramatic flair, he has colored the world’s opinion of some of the greatest men of Russia. Two of his works—"Portrait of Anton Rubenstein Conducting" and "Portrait of Tolstoy"—were seen in the Hermitage Exhibit at the Los Angeles County Museum. While he did show recognition of Western innovations (as with the Impressionist’s discoveries of brush stroke beautifully exemplified in "Portrait of Nadya"), Repin always retained his position between The Wanderers and the Slavophiles, giving generously in an age of narrow aesthetics.
Prepared for the Santa Barbara Museum of Art Docent Council by Penny Steward, March 25, 1976
Bibliography
Bunt, Cyril G. E. Russian Art from Scyths to Soviets. London: The Studio, 1946.
Chamot, Mary. Russian Painting and Sculpture. Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1963.
Chirikov, E. N. and Alexander Fyodorovich Kerensky. “International Studio 73: lxxxiv-lxxxv.” May, 1921.
Frankel, Tobia. The Russian Artist. New York: McMillan Co., 1972.
Gray, Camilla. The Great Experiment: Russian Art, 1863-1922. London: Thames and Hudson, 1962.
Hamilton, George Heard. Art and Architecture of Russia. Maryland: Penguin Books, 1954.
Hare, Richard. The Art and Artists of Russia. London: Methan and Co., 1965.
Obolensky, Prince Dimitri. Art Treasures in Russia. New York and Toronto: McGraw Hill, 1970.
Rice, Tamare Talbot. A Concise History of Russian Art. New York and Washington: Praeger, 1963.
Richardson, John and Eric Zafran, eds. Master Paintings from the Hermitage and the State Russian Museum. Leningrad. New York: Knoedler and Co., Inc., 1975.
Sjeklocha, Paul Igor Mead. Unofficial Art in the Soviet Union. Berkeley: U.C. Berkeley Press, 1967.
Wolf, Martin F. Russian Impact on Art. New York: Philosophical Library, 1950.
POSTSCRIPT
His realistic works often expressed great psychological depth and exposed the tensions within the existing social order. Beginning in the late 1920s, detailed works on him were published in the USSR, where a Repin cult developed about a decade later, and where he was held up as a model "progressive" and "realist" to be imitated by "Socialist Realist" artists in the Soviet Union.
From the web site, The Complete Repin
http://www.ilyarepin.org/
SBMA CURATORIAL LABELS
Though better known for his historical and contemporary genre scenes, Repin was an accomplished portraitist, whose subjects included a wide range of pre-revolutionary Russian writers, painters, and musicians, including Anton Rubenstein and Leo Tolstoy. As a portraitist, Repin was particularly renowned for his sensitivity to his sitters' complex personalities. In this late portrait, academic principles of composition are combined with a looser brushwork and lighter palette, to which Repin was drawn. Nadya's direct gaze and the unarticulated background emphasize the figure's individual psychology, despite the lack of any identifying accoutrements or props.
Of Ukranian birth, Ilya Repin was one of the most influential artists in Russia, particularly renowned for his treatment of historical and contemporary socio-political issues, his paintings en plein air, and his imaginative and individualistic portraits. Initially trained in the Kharkiv-Chuguyev icon painting school, in 1863 Repin moved to St. Petersburg, where he first studied at the Drawing School of the Society for the Encouragement of Artists (1863-1864), and then at the Academy of Art (1864-1871).
Despite his academic training, Repin quickly moved beyond traditional artistic themes and modes of finish. Influenced by utopian and revolutionary ideals of the period and by the progressively-minded Russian intelligentsia with whom he associated, Repin's peasant genre subjects quickly became the foremost exemplar of the Russian Realist style of the late 19th century. From 1873-1876, Repin lived in Paris, and was strongly influenced by the direct approach and coloristic style of Eugene Delacroix and Edouard Manet. Determined to create and propagate a specifically Russian artistic identity, Repin began in 1894 to teach painting and composition privately and at the St. Petersburg Academy of Art. He died in 1930 in the Finnish town of Kuokkala, having lived there exclusively since the 1917 Finnish independence from Russia.
- Van Gogh to Munch, 2013