Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2016 https://archive.org/details/ilyarepinexhibitOObrin 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 And the blue banner of Jinghis Khan has been replaced by the red badge of revolution and a reversion to the most sinister forms of despotism.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) ■ s ' 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 . > / P. P. GNEDICH C.L’W Haft' kA /utfass* 1 * U\ i Mtikj /cyyi M *•*/* r / /«* S-fif $**&**> ‘ E. N. CHIRIKOV VLADIMIR VASILYEVICH STASOV ' ■ . PORTRAIT SKETCH, 1906 A. I. SVIRSKY V. P. STATZENKO MADAME G. ANNENKOVA 'A ; r. m m •.,* ' GETTY CENTER LIBRARY 3 3125 00652 7002