Ilya Efimovich Repin, 1844-1930

Vladimir Fiala, Russkaya Zhivopis v Sobraniakh Chekhoslovakii, Leningrad, 1974, No. 380, p.128.

The offered work is a 1925 oil portrait of Ilya Repin's daughter, Vera Ilynichna Repina (1872-1948), an actress and herself an amateur painter. The eldest of his four children, she was born the same year that Repin married Vera Alexayevna Shevtsova (1855-1917), the daughter of Alexander Shevtsov, a professor of architecture and his landlord in St. Petersburg. Repin painted and drew many images of his children throughout his life, capturing them with great tenderness and insight as they grew and Vera was no exception, having produced eight oil portraits of her as well as thirteen drawings. Including a particularly intimate portrait of the two-year-old Vera seated on a chair (1874, Tretyakov Gallery); and Autumn Bouquet, a portrait of Vera at the age of twenty-four, painted on Repin’s estate at Zdraveno in 1892, and regarded as one of his best portraits, purchased by Pavel Tretyakov directly from the artist. The present work is probably Repin’s last image of his daughter, painted when she was a mature woman of fifty-three and he himself was eighty-one.

In 1899, Repin bought the Penates estate near the Finnish village of Kuokkala, moving there permanently in 1903, the same year that the arthritis that he was suffering from in his right hand, became so severe that he was obliged to develop techniques to help him overcome the difficulties that this created with his work. Initially designing a palette that he could wear around his waist, he subsequently taught himself to paint with his left hand, but from 1907 onwards there was a noticeable change in the style of his work, and a marked decrease in the amount that he produced.

Repin remained on his Penates estate for the remainder of his life, and in 1915 when Kuokkala became part of independent Finland, became a Finnish citizen, both mentally and geographically removed from Russia. A situation that was exacerbated when the artist’s freedom of movement was curtailed with the closing of the frontier between Russia and Finland in April 1918, making it extremely difficult for him maintain links with his family in Petrograd.

In April 1922, Vera Ilychna moved to Penates from Petrograd and was to stay there for many years. There is a pencil drawing of her by her father in the collection at Penates, signed and dated 1926, although it is believed to have been signed a year after it was drawn as Repin refers to it in a letter to V. Voinov of the 19th February 1925 in which he mentions that he recently made a life-size portrait of his daughter on lithographic paper. It is likely that the drawing was begun early in 1925, the same year as the offered portrait, and it is interesting to compare the two. (See Maria Karpenko (et al), Ilya Repin: Painting, Graphic Arts, Leningrad, 1985, Cat. No. 326, plate 1191, p.283).

The inscription on the painting is somewhat enigmatic and it has been suggested that it may indicate a level of collaboration on the painting between Ilya Repin and his son, Yuri, with the main body of the painting by the father and elements of the background and other details by the son.

Yuri Ilyich Repin (1877-1954) attended the Academy of Fine Art in St. Petersburg, and studied with his father, who directly supervised his work and development. In 1894, Yuri travelled with his father to Europe.  Primarily a portrait painter, Yuri was completely overshadowed by the genius of his father and never achieved any significant success. When Ilya Repin died in 1930, Yuri and his family continued to live on the estate at Penates. Two of his sons were killed in a tragic accident in the 1930’s. He lived in great penury in Helsinki throughout the Second World War, and died there in 1954. There is a portrait of his wife, painted by him in 1907, in the Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, and six other works by him in the Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, including an 1895 portrait of his mother.