Ilya Efimovich Repin

Private Collection, Japan

The canvas has been lined. There is a thick layer of new varnish. UV light reveals retouching along the edge of the original canvas where this has been toned in to continue the picture onto the lining canvas. There are some further spots of retouching in places elsewhere, mainly confined to the edges of the composition. Held in a modern gold painted moulded plaster frame.
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NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

In November 1876 Repin returned from Paris with his young wife and two daughters to his native town of Chuguev in Kharkov oblast, where he set up a studio in a wing of his father's house. Clearly invigorated by the return home, Repin worked with renewed enthusiasm seizing on any subject which he might work up into a larger composition in future.  A number of studies from this important homecoming period are in the collections of The Russian Museum and the Penates Museum, and represent an almost daily visual diary of his life at this period - studies of his family, friends and surrounding scenery. In the summer he and his family moved to Mokhnachi, a villge not far from Chuguev where he painted a great deal. In his article Proizvendeniya russkikh khudozhnikov v Yaponii, A.Zamoshkin lists a Repin study titled The Village of Mokhnachi, Kharkov province, signed I.Repin 1877 lower right (listed without dimensions).

We are grateful to Lyudmila Andrushchenko, Senior Researcher of the Repin Museum, Penates, for supplying this note.