Ilya Efimovich Repin

New York, Kingore Galleries, The Ilya Repin Exhibition, 1921, no.41

C.Brinton, The Ilya Repin Exhibition, New York, 1921, no.41 listed; illustrated b/w

Lots 20 and 21 come from a series of graphic portraits executed at Penaty, Repin's studio and summer home in Finland, between 1906 and 1911. The identical sizes and grey card supports suggest they were once part of the same album, and, indeed, when Repin was asked to exhibit 39 of them in a dedicated gallery at the 1911 International Art Exhibition in Rome he gave them the collective title of The Nordman Album, a reference to Natalia Nordman, writer, suffragette and Repin's companion, whose hospitality attracted many notable visitors to Penaty including Maxim Gorky, Vasily Polenov and Vladimir Mayakovsky. The life of the writer Alexei Svirsky (1865-1942) was marked by financial instability, imprisonment and long periods of nomadic existence which included stints in Persia and the Ottoman Empire. Svirsky did not start publishing his work until his late forties, and the trying circumstances of his life inspired many of his novels, including Lost People (1898) and Redhead (1903).