The russian vision

The Russian Vision THE ART OF

ILYA REPIN

D AV I D J AC K S O N

1. RURAL BEGINNINGS AND THE ROAD TO ST. PETERSBURG

introduced to the Artel established by Kramskoy and other secessionists. Kramskoy was to exercise enormous influence on Repin’s career, as a teacher and artistic thinker, and with hindsight Repin recalled his evenings at the Artel as being more significant than his formal training.There seems little doubt that much of his future thinking on the nature and aims of his art owe more to the free-thinking atmosphere of the Artel than to the rigid, learningby-rote system of the Academy, though the latter must take large credit for Repin’s technical excellence.

The Rise of Realism: Intellectual Turbulence and Academic Hegemony During the eighteenth century the slow rise of a realist tradition outside of the Academy was taking shape. In the 1760s Ivan Ermenev (1746-after 1779) depicted scenes of rural and urban poverty, and in the 1770s Mikhail Shibanov (d. after 1789) included peasants, albeit of a prosperous variety, in his canvases.The Academy however did not recognise the lower orders as fit subjects for art and there was a hiatus of nearly fifty years before Aleksei Venetsianov (1780-1847), working with greater naturalism, firmly established the genre. To pursue such subject matter Venetsianov was compelled to eschew the Academy and establish an independent school, a singular rarity in its day. Pavel Fedotov (1815-1852) is credited with introducing a discernibly critical note into Russian painting, filling a brief and tragic life with Hogarthian scenes satirising the foibles of the middle-classes and rampant abuses of bureaucracy. An important influence on this emerging tradition was Vasily Perov (1833-1882), who depicted poverty, hunger, drunkenness, prostitution and death, and who attacked official abuses with unprecedented gusto. His most celebrated work, The Village Easter Procession (figure 2), a detailed depiction of rural poverty and drunken priests, caused great offence and was withdrawn from exhibition.12 Amongst other artists of the mid nineteenth century, pushing forward the limits of acceptable subject matter whilst, covertly or otherwise, weaving strains of social discord into their narratives, was Valery Yakobi (1836-1902), whose painting of a wretched and bedraggled group of Siberian-bound political convicts, The Prisoners’ Halt (figure 3) caused a predictable uproar.Vasily Pukirev’s The Unequal Marriage (figure 4) portraying the wedding of an aged wealthy groom to his young and impoverished bride, reputedly shamed a number of real-life generals out of marrying in similar circumstances.

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The visual arts lagged behind, but followed the intellectual path traced by writers such as Pushkin, Griboedev and Gogol, and by liberal or radical thinkers such as Belinsky, Pisarev, Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov. As the so-called ‘lower orders’ were incorporated

Figure 3. Valery Yakobi. The Prisoners’ Halt. 1861. 98·6 x 143·5. TG.

into the painterly province, so artists began heeding injunctions to cease the academic preoccupation with religion, antiquity and mythology, and to embrace contemporary themes during a period of discernible historic and social change. The liberation of the serfs in

1861, Russia’s rapid industrialisation, the rise of the Raznochintsy – the non-noble intelligentsia to which many of the new thinkers belonged – were significant events which demanded to be chronicled over the dearth of irrelevant, socially divorced academic products.

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Figue 20. Jew at Prayer. 1875. 80 x 64¡5. TG.

The Parisian Period Repin was extraordinarily active throughout his stay in the French capital, fulfilling many minor canvases and even branching into commercial production with the sale of some decorative plates produced in collaboration with Polenov, Savitsky, and Bogolyubov.

The railway magnate Samuel Polyakov agreed to advance the artists 1000 francs for studio and production costs and Stasov secured a sales agreement for them in St. Petersburg, advising the Museum of the Society for the Lovers of Art to purchase examples.Though 48

the venture fizzled out it was a novel and enterprising idea, examples of which still survive.These include a plate in honour of Polyakov’s railway enterprises where, true to his humble origins, Repin contributed a study of peasants in a third-class wagon.44 Other oil paintings of this period include a fine portrait Jew at Prayer (figure 20). Bogolyubov, who claimed he had not seen another of Repin’s works with such strong colour and simplicity, recommended the painting to Tretyakov. Repin told Stasov that he had received many compliments on the picture when it was at the framers where the dealer Duboile had pressed him for something to

Figure 21. On the Turf Seat. 1876. 36 x 55·5. RM.

sell.45 Tretyakov was much pleased by the work and paid the 500 roubles asked. The painting today still has the freshness of colour that so impressed Bogolyubov and is a reminder of how Repin’s other, now darker paintings, might once have looked.The technique is very broad but never sloppy and the sensitive treatment of the aged face makes it one of his most sensitive and humane portraits.

Sadko was by no means the only Russian subject Repin tackled in Paris, and these subjects, when placed in context with A Parisian Café and his Normandy pictures, show a conflicting and often contradictory nature. From the moment he arrived in France

Repin became home-sick for the Ukraine and planned a number of themes from his native soil, an affinity with which he found in the rural simplicity of Veules. The result was two decorative portraits of young women in Ukrainian costume, Ukrainian Girl (1875) and Ukrainian Girl by a Wicker Fence (1876), relaxed figures in brightly coloured costumes adorned with jewellery. Repin was much attracted to the decorative side of such scenes and wrote from Chuguev shortly after returning from France: ‘Only Little Russians and Parisians know how to dress with taste... It is simply charming, charming and charming!!!’ 46 Though these minor works 49

4. PEASANT LIFE: CONTEMPORARY RUSSIA

The 1890s would see a fresh infusion of critical-realist blood in the shape of painters like Nikolai Kasatkin and Sergei Ivanov, but a work like Ivan Bogdanov’s The Novice (1893, TG) showing a tearful child apprentice being rebuked by his drunken boss, is characteristic of a 72

later shift of focus from the general deprivations of the lower classes to sentimental renditions of individual misfortune.

But for artists of the 1860s and the first generation of Peredvizhnik painters peasant scenes were inextricably linked with ethical issues

4. PEASANT LIFE: CONTEMPORARY RUSSIA

Figure 32. Barge-haulers on the Volga. 1870-1873. 131¡5 x 281. RM.

and viewers consciously sought the critical aspects of a given work, often with some confusion. In the same way that an artist could be acclaimed a radical reformer for exposing the brutal conditions of the toiling masses, it was equally possible to laud him as a nationalist

surveying the Russian scene. Such confusion greeted Repin’s first major success Barge-haulers on the Volga (figure 32) which was greeted as both a denunciation of autocratic injustice and a hymn to indigenous peasant fortitude.

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Figure 41. Examination in a Village School. 1877-1878. Private collection.

1878 Paris Universal Exposition selected The Archdeacon for exhibition the Academy’s President intervened on the grounds that it was an inappropriate image with which to acquaint the French with the Russian clergy.25 Stasov greeted The Archdeacon as a triumphant artistic rejuvenation, Repin’s return to the native fold. In a review of unstinting praise he lauded the depiction as ‘one of the most genuine, profoundly national Russian types’ and paid homage to the vibrant, passionate execution of the portrait, quoting Kramskoy that Repin painted ‘as if in a frenzy’.26 Musorgsky joined the chorus of approval and compared the work to ‘Varlaam’ from Pushkin’s Boris Godunov: ‘I saw The Archdeacon created by our famous Ilya Repin.This painting represents a veritable volcano.

The eyes of Varlaam follow the spectator incessantly. What a terrifying sweep of the brush, what abundant breadth!’ 27 The style and execution of The Archdeacon, as well as Peasant with an Evil Eye and A Cautious One, are free of the vestiges of Parisian influence that persisted in Repin’s less formal compositions of this time, and Stasov pointed to precedents in seventeenth century 82

Dutch art, Rubens and Rembrandt particularly. In all three paintings Repin combines generic titles with vacant backgrounds and neutral colours to focus attention solely on the sitter. The handling of the paint, impasted and vigorously applied, renders Stasov’s comparisons most apt. Repin however was not single-minded enough to pursue the direction in which these works were leading him and it was to be some years before Stasov’s prediction was realised that they were mere rehearsals presaging the birth of a major masterpiece. Repin was side-tracked by numerous portrait commissions as well as work on Tsarevna Sofya and The Zaporozhye Cossacks, but he did not abandon the contemporary scene altogether.

Examination in a Village School One other work of interest came out of Repin’s sojourn in Chuguev, though it was not completed until he and his family were established in Moscow and was exhibited only thirteen years later.

Examination in a Village School (figure 41) was begun in early 1878 but

Figure 42. On a Park Bridge. 1879. 38 x 61. The State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow.

then dropped in favour of The Archdeacon and on first sight the painting, which remained unfinished, appears to be a lively but unassuming piece of genre. The examiner, an inspector of national schools, sits behind a desk at the head of a village class, a priest by his side, and stares with displeasure at the young pupil standing in front of him. A paper in the inspector’s hand suggests he is testing the boy and clearly not getting the desired responses.The priest talks to the inspector in an agitated manner, gesticulating at the boy apologetically, whilst the class of village urchins regards the lone pupil’s ordeal with a mixture of apprehension, apathy and delight.

What makes this piece of competent but unprepossessing painting of particular interest is the teacher standing at the blackboard, scrutinising the inspector with a look of disapproval. This figure closely resembles studies of a young student at the St. Petersburg University, Nikolai Ventsel, whom Repin used as a model for the apprehended populist in his painting Arrest of a Propagandist (figure 55). It is possible that Repin conceived the work as one of his first depictions of revolutionary activity, and in this context it was included in his one man show of 1891.28 The populist movement

was an issue much to the fore during the late 1870s and early in 1878. As Repin made his first sketch for Arrest of a Propagandist and worked on Examination in a Village School a celebrated mass trial of revolutionary propagandists, the so-called ‘trial of the 193’, drew to its predictable conclusion of harsh sentencing.Whether Repin used Ventsel merely as the model for both pictures, or whether he intended to develop Examination in a Village School along the theme of populist activity in rural Russia, his letters give no hint. The ambiguity of the study therefore lends itself to both a genristic and a political reading.Though the slightly comic characterisations of the inspector and the priest are clearly disrespectful, one is inclined to the former viewpoint by virtue of the animated nature of the scene, especially the prominence and liveliness of the peasant children.

During his years of residency in Moscow (1877-1882) Repin was a frequent visitor to Mamontov’s country estate, Abramtsevo, where he began work on The Zaporozhye Cossacks and carried out research for Tsarevna Sofya. Away from the city he again turned to small, uneventful records of daily life in the surrounding environs.

These include one of his most assured and aesthetically relaxed 83

5. POLITICAL PAINTINGS: THE ART OF DISSENT

Figure 56. A Secret Meeting. 1883. 104 x 173. TG.

find themselves rudely rejected by the conservative-minded peasantry.This is reflected in the development of the painting which through early sketches and oil variants gradually divorced the activist from the peasants, leaving him stranded in the centre of the composition.5 The inclusion of some police officers who busily scrutinise the illegal literature, and the triumphant discovery of more papers by a zealous official, add to the humiliation of the populist.

Those peasants closest to him collude with the militia, assisting them to pinion the revolutionary to the stake in a scene reminiscent of martyrdom or the mocking of Christ.6 A group of conspiratorial elders, almost lost in the dark, look with guilt and complicity at the arrest, whilst a mute but demonic figure seated in the rear plays the role of Judas; ‘the informer’ as Repin called him.7 At the time Repin commenced painting, the notorious mass trials of populists had begun and in developing the theme he highlighted the tragic division between the propagandists and the peasantry which destroyed the movement as effectively as police intervention. The assassination of Aleksandr II, which resulted in judicial reprisals and political repressions, marked the decline of idealism as the revolutionaries turned to violence. Repin clearly 100

wished to address the peasants’ role in the failure of the populist movement and, perhaps, impute to them some of the blame for the increasingly desperate wave of terrorist activity that ensued.

The authenticity of the scene rested on eye-witness accounts and possibly firsthand experience of similar events from Repin’s time in Chuguev and the rural environs of Moscow. Nikolai Ventsel, the model for the teacher in Examination in a Village School (figure 41) also posed for the activist. Ventsel was a typical product of populism during the 1870s who read Dobrolyubov, Pisarev, and seditious journals on his way to becoming a skilled, professional revolutionary.

Such a background placed him in an ideal position to advise Repin on the veracity of the incidents which occur in the painting.8 In common with many political themes Arrest of a Propagandist could not be exhibited until long after completion, when such canvases were less provocative – not until 1892 in fact. Repin’s sympathies seem, however, unmistakable. The refined features of the propagandist, his isolation and humiliation, show a sympathetic attitude for the failed idealism of the practical populist ideology.

The revolutionary as victim or martyr, rather than a modern Prometheus, was an image with which Repin clearly felt more

5. POLITICAL PAINTINGS: THE ART OF DISSENT

comfortable. Arrest of a Propagandist was the first in a series of works in a similar vein which might be construed as addressing the futility of kicking against the powerful autocratic system.

Before completion of his next major political work, Repin produced the intriguing A Secret Meeting (figure 56) depicting an animated, clandestine gathering of members of the Narodnaya Volya movement.

A large work which was never completed, the handling of paint is very loose and sketchy, with large areas of bare canvas showing through.The hands of the figures around the table are drawn poorly and the whole has the air of something put down in haste.The scene is non-specific, but executed just two years after the assassination of Aleksandr II, its conspiratorial air and the demagogic central figure are suggestive of political fanaticism. It was not exhibited until

1896/97 under the bland title By Lamplight, but in 1924, after the October Revolution, it was exhibited in Moscow as Meeting of the Nihilists.9 The adaptability of the canvas to such differing displays is facilitated by the anonymous setting and ambiguous motives, but the secretive, excitable atmosphere of the underground meeting is well evoked. Though the size of the canvas suggests a serious undertaking, completion of the theme was pushed aside by the sheer volume of work in Repin’s studio at this time and its full import remains a mystery.

Also distracting Repin had been a tour of Europe in the company of Stasov in April-May 1883 which occasioned a small work with a political theme: The Annual Meeting in Memory of the French Communards at the Père-Lachaise Cemetery in Paris (figure 57).10 The

Figure 57. The Annual Meeting in Memory of the French Communards at the Père-Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. 1883. 36·8 x 59·8. TG.

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6. PORTRAITURE: THE FACE OF RUSSIA

Figure 84. Portrait of the story-teller Vasily Shchegolenkov. 1879. 102 x 80. RM.

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6. PORTRAITURE: THE FACE OF RUSSIA

Figure 85. Portrait of Mitrofan Belyaev. 1886. 125 x 89. RM.

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6. PORTRAITURE: THE FACE OF RUSSIA

Figure 92. A Lively Girl.Vera Repin. 1884. 111 x 84·4. TG.

an obliquely foreshortened pose which displaces the facial features, severely complicating a successful rendition, yet this is resolved seemingly with ease.

A sense of gentle, intimate, harmonious family life pervades Repin’s portraits of his wife and children, and whilst this might not be an accurate reflection of the family household, they bespeak a depth of genuine, unforced emotional warmth which, clearly, the artist felt more able to express through the reflective process of his 144

work. But apart from these characteristics he also utilised the less grand, more informal nature of his family portraits, to explore and experiment with technical and formal considerations.This is most marked in his works of the 1890s, when, for reasons which will be taken up in the following chapter, he was vigorously advocating aestheticism in art. The painterly freedom of personal portraits had, however, always inclined him to work with greater attention to the aesthetic side of his talent, as for instance with On the Turf Seat (figure 21), Girl With a Bunch of Flowers. Vera Repin, (figure 22) and On a Park Bridge (figure 42).

A Lively Girl. Vera Repin (figure 92) is an example of a predominantly aesthetic painting which predates the 1890s, suggesting that caution should be exercised in too narrowly defining that decade in terms of the artist’s advocacy of ‘art for art’s sake’. The bright, sunny figure of Repin’s daughter, commendably unidealised with her Asiatic, almond-shaped eyes and prominent nose, is suspended across the canvas against a flat blue background of sky, wisps of grass below providing the only indication of her surroundings. Conceived at the time Repin was finishing They Did Not Expect Him, the sense of light, crisp, clean air is an element common to both, but is here the chief concern and main subject of the painting, falling and reflecting on the girls ruffled dress, and permeating her straw hat to cast a soft glow on her face.

A preoccupation with plein air tonality and colourful, painterly execution, can also be seen in the later portrait of Vera, Autumn Bouquet (figure 93). Though this is often regarded as a prime example of Repin’s adherence to aestheticism in the 1890s, it is tonally more subdued than the bright, airy composition of the young Vera from 1884. Executed with a higher degree of finish and attention to fine detail, it is less convincing as a piece of free painterly exuberance, but is still a particularly graceful and casual portrait, again untainted by any concession to idealisation.The mature Vera shows the same homely facial characteristics which mark her childhood portraits.

Figure 93.

Autumn Bouquet. Portrait of Vera Repin. 1892. 111 x 65. TG.

The painterly concerns of Repin’s portraits are perhaps most spectacularly to the fore in that of his daughter Nadya, In the Sunlight (figure 94) a work which radiates pure and reflected light, juxtaposed with the spiky, starkly graphic background of the dark parasol. Like Autumn Bouquet it was painted in the peaceful retreat of Repin’s estate Zdravnevo, situated on the banks of the western River Dvina in Belorussia, far from the pressures of the capital and his official role as eminent national artist.The work is executed with great verve and panache, the brushstrokes racing around the canvas, whilst the landscape in the background is roughed-in almost in an abstract manner.Yet the tonal qualities of the play of light on the woman’s

clothing harmonise in a manner which gives the work a solid, concrete appearance, achieved totally by paint, without the use of drawing to accentuate detail. This is particularly obvious on close inspection of the sitter’s face. In reproduction this appears to be a well defined portrait, but is in fact painted in a very sketchy manner, the artist’s preoccupation being with a rendition of the soft light which illuminates the face through the thin film of his daughter’s wide-brimmed hat.

And occasionally Repin could impart the intimacy and apparently artless lack of pretension of his family portraits to those of others, notably children, for whom he appears to have possessed 145

6. PORTRAITURE: THE FACE OF RUSSIA

studied pose of meditation, whilst retaining a broad, colourful, painterly execution. The background as ever is kept purposely blank, providing no distraction from either the decorative dress or the serious, soulful expression of the sitter.

Of a particularly high standard is Repin’s portrait of Countess Natalya Golovina (figure 97) an elegantly poised work showing the society beauty’s refined and confident profile.

Though Repin makes no attempt to capture her psychological state, the freedom with which the work is executed, with swift, impasted but sure brushwork, and the harmonies of pink, cream and rich cherrycoloured tones, enlivened by the Countess’s shimmering jewellery, show him at the height of his artistic powers, totally and confidently in command. Anna Ostroumova-Lebedeva, a pupil of Repin’s, recalled at this time her wonder at observing how the artist’s large brushes performed the most dexterous and delicate of tasks: ‘The brush obeys him magically...it performs all he wishes.’ 27 That same sureness of touch and elegance of execution pervades the aloof but magnificent figure of Baroness Varvara Ikskul von Hildenbandt (figure 98) a noted collector and founder of numerous philanthropic societies whose celebrated literary, artistic and musical salons Repin frequented throughout the 1890s. A woman of progressive ideas, a Figure 96. Portrait of Sofya Dragomirova. 1889. 98·5 x 78·5. RM. beautiful and successful society hostess, and the subject of much malicious gossip, Repin makes commanding use once more of a tall, narrow composition. The sitter’s face, bisected from ear to ear by a dark Society Portraits and Graphic Experimentation veil, is slightly disconcerting, but the graceful ease and confidence of the pose, the clash of jet black and dazzling red forms, coupled Repin’s society portraits, of which Louise Mercy D’Argenteau’s is with the splashes of gold and silver of the Baroness’s heavy a fine but unconventional example, generally utilise an aesthetic bracelets, present a slim, elegant, nonchalant study of Russian chic of bold, stylish, or decorative designs, but in a more premeditated, in the late 1880s: a confident woman, assured of her cultural and less informal manner than those of his family; though few are social status.28 ‘formal’ in a stilted or stuffy manner.The best of these works again The technical freedom and maturity which marks Repin’s best belong roughly to the 1890s. The portrait of Sofya Dragomirova portraits in oils and watercolours was innovatively transferred to (figure 96) the eighteen year old daughter of a famous general, the medium of graphic art during the 1890s, though not in the painted in a rich green Ukrainian costume, uses a relaxed but 148

6. PORTRAITURE: THE FACE OF RUSSIA

Figure 97. Portrait of Natalya Golovina. 1896. 90 x 59. RM.

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Figure 108. Country House of the Academy of Arts. 1898. 64 x 106. RM.

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8. REPIN AT PENATY 1907-1930: RECURRING THEMES AND STYLISTIC CHANGES

Figure 116. Gopak. Dance of the Zaporozhye Cossacks. 1927. Oil on linoleum. 174 x 210. Private collection.

Photograph: Uppsala Auktionskammare, Sweden.

48) and a return to the Cossack theme with which he had scored one of his greatest popular triumphs. Cossacks from the Black Sea Coast (figure 115) was begun in late 1907 whilst Repin was in Chuguev, only a month after resigning from the Academy, and during the same months in which he began writing his childhood memoirs. It seems not unreasonable then to view the work as both a release from the formality and constraint of the capital and a return to the earthy, unsophisticated sincerity of his native land and Ukrainian forbears. It was shown at the Peredvizhnik exhibition of 1908 but was very poorly received. Repin initially claimed that this was because the critics were looking for the ‘old Repin’, where he had been preoccupied with technical and artistic considerations of composition and harmony.32 He was forced to recant however when he saw the painting in situ and admitted that it was seriously flawed. He told the historian and ethnographer Dmitry Yavornitsky, who had advised on various aspects of The Zaporozhye Cossacks, that he would re-work the 188

canvas as soon as the exhibition ended.33 Thereafter events followed a predictable course and work continued in 1909 (concurrent with re-workings of The Demonstration of 17 October 1905 and Religious Procession in an Oak Forest) and was still in progress as late as 1919.

Given Repin’s poor health this is an exceptionally large canvas and in several respects works very well, suggesting perhaps that in this instance the repainting paid off.The colour is still fresh and the dramatic diagonal composition, with the bottom right of the canvas obscured by sea-spray, produces a daring, unconventional image of the boat in a sharply downcast position. The artist’s determined attempt to capture the spirit of the wild sea engulfing the robust, individualised Cossacks is also well realised.34 In character the painting is of the same broad, sketchy manner which characterises Repin’s work of this period, showing that what he lacked in technical accomplishment or originality of thought was compensated for by sheer exuberance and persistence of will.

His last work on the Cossack theme, indeed one of his very last

8. REPIN AT PENATY 1907-1930: RECURRING THEMES AND STYLISTIC CHANGES

Figure 117. Portrait of Vladimir Bekhterev. 1913. 107 x 78. RM.

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I love art more than virtue, more than people, more than family, more than friends, more than any kind of happiness or joy in life. I love it secretly, jealously, like an old drunkard – incurably.

ISBN: 978-1-85149-774-4

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