Ilya Efimovich Repin

Estimate

30,000 - 50,000 GBP

bidding is closed

Description

Ilya Efimovich Repin
Study for Job and His Comforters
signed in Cyrillic on the reverse; further bearing a label numbered 162 and variously inscribed on the stretcher
oil on canvas
44 by 35.5cm, 17 1/4 by 14in.

Provenance

Acquired by the father of the present owner in St Petersburg in the 1930s

Literature

Possibly I.Grabar, Repin: ot pervykh portretov epokhi rastsveta do poslednikh tvorcheskikh let, vol.2, Moscow: IZOGIZ, 1937, p.261, listed under works for 1869 and titled Golova Iova. Etiud k kartine s naturshchika

Catalogue Note

Repin was only 25 years old when he painted Job and His Comforters, now in the collection of the State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg. Having entered the Academy of Arts in 1864, he worked on many classical and religious paintings as part of his studies. Job and His Comforters was one of his most successful works, earning the young Repin a Small Gold Medal and praise from the artist Rafail Levitsky: ‘The picture is surprisingly good. I did not expect him to have such understanding of life’ (Ilya Repin, Aurora Art Publishers, Leningrad, 1987, p.235).

The present work is an oil sketch for Job himself, executed in 1869, and is characteristic of the artist's instinctively free technique, which is suppressed in the tighter final painting. The accomplished treatment of the light, which casts Job’s face in a meditative shadow, the confident handling of the tonal palette and the skillful rendering of anatomical details attest to Repin’s talent even at this early stage of his career.