Ilya Yefimovich Repin was born in the town of Chuhuiv in the Kharkov Governorate. His paternal grandfather—a non-serving Cossack, Vasily Yefimovich Repin—was engaged in trade and owned an inn. According to the metric books, he died in the 1830s, after which all household responsibilities fell on his wife, Natalia Titovna Repina. The artist’s father, Yefim Vasilyevich, was the eldest child in the family. In memoir essays dedicated to his childhood, Ilya Yefimovich mentioned his father as a “conscripted soldier” who, together with his brother, annually traveled to the Don region and, covering a distance of three hundred versts, drove herds of horses there for sale. During his service in the Chuhuiv Uhlan Regiment, Yefim Vasilyevich managed to participate in three military campaigns and received awards. Ilya Repin tried to maintain his connection with his hometown and Sloboda Ukraine until the end of his life, and Ukrainian motifs held an important place in the artist’s work.

The future artist began drawing early. Paints were brought to the Repin household by his cousin Trofim Chaplygin, and from then on the boy never parted with watercolor. “I had never seen paints before and eagerly awaited when Trofim would paint with them. The first picture—a watermelon—suddenly came to life before our eyes. But the real miracle was when Trofim painted the cut half of a second watermelon with red paint so vividly and juicy that we even wanted to eat the watermelon; and when the red paint dried, he used a thin brush to add black seeds here and there on the red flesh—miracle! miracle!”

When Ilya Repin was 11 years old, he was sent to a topographers’ school—this specialty was in demand in Chuhuiv. But the boy studied there only two years before the school was closed. He then became an apprentice in an icon-painting workshop under Ivan Bunakov, a representative of an artistic dynasty. Repin recalled him: “My teacher, Ivan Mikhailovich Bunakov, was an excellent portraitist, a very talented painter.”

The young pupil’s talent was quickly noticed: at 16, Repin already went to work with a nomadic artel of icon painters. A few years later, the young artist decided to go to Saint Petersburg to study painting. He gathered all the money he had earned and left to enroll in the Academy of Arts.

Repin failed the first entrance exams to the Academy of Arts. However, he did not return to his hometown. The aspiring artist became a student at a preparatory evening school and later took the Academy exams again—and was admitted. During eight years of study, he became acquainted with many representatives of the creative elite of the Northern capital: Repin closely associated with artists Ivan Kramskoi, whom he called his teacher in memoirs, and Vasily Polenov, as well as critic Vasily Stasov.

However, the young painter lived in poverty. He earned extra money by selling his paintings. One of his genre paintings—depicting a student watching a girl through a window—was sold for a rather large sum. The artist recalled: “I think I never experienced such happiness in my entire life!” Besides genre paintings, Repin also created portraits. In 1869, he painted Vera Shevtsova, who became his wife three years later.

For his diploma work—a painting on a biblical theme, “The Resurrection of Jairus’s Daughter”—Repin received the Large Gold Medal and the opportunity to travel to Europe to study Western European art.

By the time Repin graduated from the Academy, he was already a fairly well-known artist and received his first major commission. Alexander Porokhovshchikov, owner of the “Slavyansky Bazaar” hotel, offered him to paint “A Gathering of Russian, Polish, and Czech Composers” to decorate the restaurant. The fee of 1,500 rubles seemed enormous to Repin at the time. Vasily Stasov helped the artist by collecting archival materials needed for the work. The public liked the painting. However, Ivan Turgenev was dissatisfied with it. In a letter to Stasov, he sarcastically called the painting “a vinaigrette of the living and the dead.” In 1873, Ilya Repin completed the canvas “Barge Haulers on the Volga,” on which he had worked for several years.

Soon the artist went on a pensioner’s trip from the Academy. In a letter to Stasov, he complained: “There are many galleries, but… no patience is enough to dig out good things.”

Returning to Russia, Repin gathered his “large stock of artistic goods,” moved from Chuhuiv to Moscow, and joined the Association of Itinerants. In Moscow, Repin met Leo Tolstoy, finished the painting “Religious Procession in the Kursk Province,” painted (on the second attempt) a portrait of Turgenev, and prepared an unknown young man named Valentin Serov for admission to the Academy of Arts. However, Moscow soon bored the artist, and he decided to move back to Petersburg.

During this time, the artist created several works that became classics of Russian art. Once he attended a concert by Rimsky-Korsakov and was inspired to “depict something in painting with the power of his music.” In 1885, at the Itinerants’ exhibition, the artist presented the iconic canvas “Ivan the Terrible Killing His Son.” At the same time, he painted the canvas “They Did Not Expect Him,” portraits of Leo Tolstoy and Pavel Tretyakov.

In 1892, an exhibition of Ilya Repin and Ivan Shishkin was held at the Academy of Arts. Its guests saw the painting “The Cossacks Write a Letter to the Turkish Sultan”—on which Repin had worked for 11 years. The canvas was purchased by Emperor Alexander III—the price of 35,000 rubles was high even for Pavel Tretyakov.

In 1894, Repin returned to the Academy of Arts—this time as a teacher. He taught there for 13 years—until 1907.

While working at the Academy of Arts, Repin managed to visit Italy again, complete several large-scale commissions from the emperor (including “The Jubilee Meeting of the State Council”), and marry for the second time—to the writer Natalia Nordman. The romance developed rapidly: they met at the beginning of 1900, and that same autumn Repin moved to Nordman’s estate near Petersburg in the village of Kuokkala. Korney Chukovsky recalled the household rules at the Repins’: the artist’s wife was a vegetarian, opposed wearing furs, and wore a thin coat in any frost. Repin himself became a vegetarian. Signs were hung around their home: “Do not expect servants—they do not exist,” “Servants are the shame of humanity.” Despite these extravagant rules, poets, writers, and artists visited the Repin-Nordman household. Repin received them on Wednesdays. The couple themselves prepared the table and took care of the guests.

All these years, Natalia Nordman collected newspaper clippings—everything mentioning her husband. And Repin began writing memoirs.

“Describing any episode, he always imbues it with passionate emotionality, theatricality. Even the arrival of the bailiff demanding Vasilyev’s passport, even the crowd jostling in front of Arkhip Kuindzhi’s paintings, even the appearance of Leo Tolstoy in a Petersburg tram—all this is dramatized by him as if for the stage.”

In 1903, the artist moved to a manor he personally arranged, which he named “Penates” after the Roman household gods. Repin greeted the February Revolution with joy, and the October Revolution, working persistently, he barely noticed, although he lived in Petrograd at the time. After the revolution, Repin was left stateless because his home fell within the borders of newly independent Finland, where he lived on a Nansen passport. Despite requests from Soviet artistic organizations and officials, including Isaak Brodsky and Kliment Voroshilov, Repin never returned to his homeland, although he became a constant surveillance target of the Finnish Central Detective Police due to anti-communist panic. His estate and property were nationalized, and his most famous works remained in Soviet Russia, where they were used in propaganda and interpreted as ideal examples of socialist realism, while the existence of ideologically inconvenient works was hushed up.

In 1918, Kuokkala became part of Finland. Repin’s perception of the revolution is interesting through the prism of the painting “The Bolsheviks.”

(Alternate titles: “The Bolsheviks. A Red Army soldier taking bread from a child,” “The Bolsheviks. Trotsky’s soldiers take bread from a boy.”) The painting was created by Repin in 1918 but left unfinished, which explains the lack of detail in some parts. According to contemporaries, the artist considered “The Bolsheviks” an epochal canvas, which he often reproduced due to demand for anti-Soviet themed paintings both among Finns and émigrés, bringing Repin a good and stable income. In the USSR, the painting “The Bolsheviks” was never exhibited anywhere, not even listed in catalogs.

Despite his negative attitude toward the revolution and good relations with Finnish artists, Repin considered moving to the USSR. First, Korney Chukovsky visited the painter, and in 1926 a whole delegation led by Isaak Brodsky, the artist’s student, came. On Anatoly Lunacharsky’s behalf, Repin was invited to return home. But by then, Repin’s health had deteriorated, and he decided not to leave his “native Penates.”

The artist died on September 29, 1930, at the age of 86, having managed to write a farewell letter to his friends and loved ones.

"...Farewell, farewell, dear friends! I was granted much happiness on earth: I was so undeservedly lucky in life. I seem not to deserve my fame at all, but I never sought it, and now, stretched out in the dust, I thank, thank, completely moved by the kind world that has always so generously glorified me..."

In 1944, Repin’s estate, which housed the Finnish command headquarters, was wiped off the face of the earth by Soviet artillery. After World War II, Kuokkala was transferred to the USSR and later renamed Repino in honor of the artist; the artist’s house was restored using authentic items of Repin’s, taken to Leningrad before the war.

For some time, there was a monument on the artist’s grave, but it was later dismantled, allegedly to install a new one. However, many years have passed, and no new monument is in sight;

now there is a simple wooden cross on the grave.

Sources:

https://vk.com/@kulturabratzab-ilya-efimovich-repin-misticheskii-genii

https://www.m-necropol.ru/repin.html

https://www.culture.ru/persons/8244/ilya-repin

https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Большевики_(картина)

https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Репин,_Илья_Ефимович