Russian Empire (born in present-day Ukraine) · Realism · Peredvizhniki (The Wanderers)
Ilya Repin
b. 5 August 1844 (O.S. 24 July), Chuguyev, Kharkov Governorate, Russian Empire (now Chuhuiv, Ukraine) — d. 29 September 1930, Kuokkala, Finland (now Repino, Russia)
Ilya Repin (1844–1930) was the leading Realist painter of the Russian Empire, born in present-day Ukraine. His works include Barge Haulers on the Volga, Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks and Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan.
1 work in the collection
Works by Ilya Repin
Ilya Repin was the most celebrated Realist painter of 19th-century Russia, a master of large narrative pictures and of psychologically penetrating portraits. Born in Chuguyev, now Chuhuiv in Ukraine, he is claimed by both Russian and Ukrainian art history. His most notorious painting is Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan (1883–85), in the Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.
Life
Repin was born in 1844 into a family of military settlers; his father had served in an uhlan regiment and later traded horses. He began as an icon painter's apprentice and painted icons from the age of 16. After failing at his first attempt, he entered the Imperial Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg, winning prizes in 1869 and 1871. A trip along the Volga in 1870 produced Barge Haulers on the Volga (1870–73), which made him famous.
He spent 1873–76 in Paris and Normandy, where he saw the early Impressionist exhibitions and learned to paint outdoors. Back in Russia he joined the Peredvizhniki (the Wanderers), the society of realist painters who toured exhibitions across the empire. He later taught at the Academy. From 1903 he lived at Penaty, his house at Kuokkala on the Gulf of Finland, which after 1917 lay in independent Finland; he never returned to Soviet Russia and died there in 1930.
Style and key works
Repin combined academic drawing with a realist commitment to ordinary people and to Russian history. His crowds are individualized face by face, and his portraits catch character in a glance.
- Barge Haulers on the Volga (1870–73), State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
- Religious Procession in Kursk Province (1880–83), Tretyakov Gallery.
- Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan (1883–85), Tretyakov Gallery: the tsar clutching his dying heir after striking him in 1581. The picture was slashed with a knife in 1913 and struck with a metal post in 2018.
- Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks (1880–91), State Russian Museum.
- Portraits of Leo Tolstoy, Modest Mussorgsky (painted days before the composer's death), Mikhail Glinka and the collector Pavel Tretyakov.
Where to see his work
The Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow and the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg hold his major works; his house-museum Penaty survives at Repino. See also our guides to famous paintings and death in art.
Questions & answers
What is Ilya Repin famous for?
Repin is famous for large Realist history and genre paintings such as Barge Haulers on the Volga, Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks and Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan, and for portraits of Tolstoy, Mussorgsky and other figures of his time.
Was Ilya Repin Russian or Ukrainian?
Repin was born in 1844 in Chuguyev, then in the Russian Empire's Kharkov Governorate and now Chuhuiv in Ukraine. He trained and worked in St. Petersburg, so he is claimed by both Russian and Ukrainian art history.
Where is Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan?
Repin's Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan (1883–85) is in the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow. It was slashed with a knife in 1913 and damaged again in a 2018 attack, and has been restored both times.