Ilya Repin

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.