Ilya Efimovich Repin

B.Avanzo Art Salon, Moscow
G.I. Zimin, acquired from the above in 1907
Private collection, New York
Acquired by the grandfather of the present owners

St Petersburg, Imperial Academy of Arts, Akademicheskaya vystavka, 15 November 1894
St Petersburg, Moscow et al., XXIX Itinerant Exhibition, 18 February 1901 – 3 February 1902
Moscow, B.Avanzo Art Salon, Vystavka-rasprodazha portretov i etyudov Repina, 1907, titled Mal'chik na balkone
New York, Huntington Hartford Gallery of Modern Art, A Survey of Russian Painting. Fifteenth Century to the Present, 14 June - 17 September 1967

‘Akademicheskaya vystavka’, Novoe vremya, no.6728, 20 November 1894, mentioned in the review 
Katalog XXIX peredvizhnoi vystavki kartin Tovarishchestva peredvizhnykh khudozhestvennykh vystavok, St Petersburg, 1901, p.11, no.140 listed as Etyud na balkone
I.Grabar and I.Zilbershtein, Repin. Khudozhestvennoe nasledstvo, vol.1, Moscow: Izdatel'stvo Akademii nauk SSSR, 1948, p.241 illustrated; p.584 listed as being in a private collection, New York
Exhibition catalogue A Survey of Russian Painting. Fifteenth Century to the Present, New York: The Gallery of Modern Art, 1967, p.61 listed as Yuri Ilyitch Repin (the Artist's Son as a Young Boy)
G.Romanov (ed.), The Society of Itinerant Art Exhibitions, 1871-1923, An Encyclopaedia, St Petersburg: Sankt-Peterburg Orkestr, 2003, p.236, no.14-224 listed 
 

Structural Condition The canvas is lined and is securely attached to a keyed wooden stretcher. The tacking and turnover edges are covered with brown paper gum tape. Paint Surface The paint surface has a relatively even but heavily discoloured varnish layer and there is evidence of ingrained dirt. The paint surface is stable at present. Inspection under ultra-violet light shows scattered retouchings, the most significant of which are: 1) large areas of retouching running along the upper part of the left and right edges and other scattered retouchings throughout the sky, 2) small spots and lines of retouching with the figure's face, 3) retouchings within the water, most notably in the left part of the composition, 4) retouchings beneath the discoloured varnish layers within the figure's coat and boots, and 5) several retouchings around the figure's boots, most notably a horizontal line towards the lower right corner. Other small spots and lines of retouching are also visible. Many of these retouchings appear excessive, are visible in natural light and could be reduced and improved with more careful inpainting. Summary The painting would therefore appear to be in relatively good and stable condition and would benefit from cleaning, restoration and revarnishing.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

Repin first visited Naples in 1873 on a student scholarship from the Imperial Academy of Arts (1873-1876). ‘I spent the summer in the environs of Naples, swimming in the sea’, he reported back to St Petersburg. ‘There is so much to see: the idyllic Capri with its Blue Grotto, the sublime Mount Vesuvius, not to mention the sweeping vistas of the two gulfs as seen from Sorrento, Pompeii and Herculaneum…the hustle and bustle of the Gulf of Naples fills one with wonder; everything seems to happen out on the streets, in the open air’ (unpublished letter to P.Iseev dated 15 September 1873).

In December 1893 Repin returned to Naples with his 16-year-old son, Yuri, this time as a newly-appointed Professor of the Imperial Academy. Although they initially intended to stay for no longer than a month, they remained there until late February 1894. Their apartment in the affluent Santa Lucia district boasted balconies with views of Mount Vesuvius and the Sorrento peninsula to the left, and of the medieval Castel dell'Ovo visible in the background of the present lot, to the front. Repin was once again captivated by Naples and in February 1894 wrote to Alexander Zhirkevich that 'this is truly a place of unimaginable wonder and beauty; but you are wrong to think that I will come away from here with new work. I didn't come for that. I mean to relax and look around, I have no ulterior motives at all'. (cited in Repin, vol.1, Moscow, 1948, p.238). Despite his declared intention to put his brush aside in Naples, it was in fact here that he painted the present lot, as well as several other works including Portrait of a Neapolitan Girl (fig.3), Self Portrait in Naples (fig.4) and The Wedding of Nicholas II and Alexandra Feodorovna (State Russian Museum).

David Jackson has argued that Repin’s portraits of his immediate family, painted without a patron or the public in mind, are amongst his best. In 1948, Grabar and Zilbershtein declared this portrait to be ‘without doubt, an exquisite work. Above all, the composition is striking: holding a Baedeker guide in his hands, Yuri stands by the iron railings of a balcony looking out onto the sun-drenched bay of Naples opposite. The figure, standing in the open-air, is modelled masterfully. The coastline closest to the viewer and visible through the balcony is economically yet eloquently suggested. The landscape, air and sun are conveyed with a level of perfection that is so rarely found in other plein air studies of this period’ (ibid, p.239).

This portrait was one of the four works Repin exhibited at the Academy on 15 November 1894, only six months after his return from Europe. Judging by the reviews published in 1894, Repin’s portrait was not received as enthusiastically as the artist had expected. Some of the more conservative critics claimed that the work had been executed with too much freedom. Grabar and Zilbershtein have suggested that the portrait’s lukewarm reception prompted Repin to rework the painting, and that as a result of this the artist took the unusual decision to exhibit it for a second time at the 29^th Itinerant Exhibition of 1901.

In 1907 the portrait was purchased by G.I. Zimin from an exhibition of Repin’s portraits and studies at the B.Avanzo Art Salon on Kuznetsky Most in Moscow. During the Soviet period the present work was discovered in a private collection in New York. In 1948 Grabar and Zilbershtein published it for the first time in their monograph; the black and white photograph illustrated on p.241 (fig.2) was supplied by Nikolai Kharitonov (1880-1944), a student of Repin’s who emigrated to New York in 1923.