Selected Portraits by Ilya Repin
The Russian Painter’s Masterful Depictions of Leo Tolstoy and Others
© Meg Nola
May 30, 2009
Ukraine-born Ilya Repin (1844-1930) was a prolific and talented artist who through the course of his career chronicled Russia’s history and identity, along with creating artwork reflecting his own life and times. The subject matter of Repin’s paintings ranges from scenes of rowdy Cossacks to the grueling labors of the Volga Boatman, to the death of the son of Ivan the Terrible. His portraits include his wife and family and everyday people, along with major figures of Repin’s day, like author Ivan Turgenev and composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. Repin’s method of combining realistic technique with Impressionist impulses distinguished him as an artist and was especially notable in his vivid portrait work.
Leo Tolstoy
Repin painted portraits of War and Peace and Anna Karenina author Leo Tolstoy in the late 1880s and early 1890s, when Tolstoy was well-known and revered. Rather than having Tolstoy pose in only a formal manner, Repin showed the true essence of the writer. His portraits include Tolstoy intently at work at his desk, and in a woodland setting that enhanced the author’s humanity and connection to the earth.
In one outdoor scene, Tolstoy is almost childlike, lounging and reading, a relaxed blur of white clothing and beard amid brownish grass and green trees. In another, Tolstoy is more serious and compelling, his bare feet showing his groundedness while the book within his tunic pocket serves as a reminder that he is, above all, a sage man of great words.
Leonid Andreyev
Also in the literary vein were Repin’s portraits of Russian short story writer and dramatist Leonid Andreyev (1871-1919). Andreyev first came to fame in 1901 with a collection of stories that was critically praised and sold many copies, and he also authored significant plays such as The Life of Man and He Who Gets Slapped. Unfortunately, following the Russian Revolution of 1917, Andreyev went to Finland in exile and never quite recaptured his earlier creative equilibrium. He was not a follower of the new order and instead spent his final years in angry anguish over what he considered to be the failures of the Bolshevik movement.
At the time of Repin’s portraits, however, Andreyev was in top form. Repin used bold colors and lines to recreate Andreyev’s intense magnetism, particularly in a 1905 painting which shows Andreyev leaning back in a bright red shirt — at rest, but still somehow tense with energy. Interestingly enough, one of Andreyev’s best-known stories was called The Red Laugh, a strange and twisted tale of supernatural military horror.
Duse and Daughter
Repin’s choice of color is highly significant in his portrait work. In his 1891 depiction of actress Eleonora Duse, Repin opted for darker browns and sepias to convey Duse’s brooding depth. In Repin’s 1884 portrait of his young daughter Vera, clear but delicate greens and blues are used to suggest the freshness and hope of a child. Vera’s balancing on a wooden fence rail is also a wonderful effect, enhancing the playfulness of youth that keeps a little girl suspended above adulthood’s more serious emotions and concerns.
Self-Portraits
Like many artists, Repin painted self-portraits throughout his career, with most showing the fairly serious, guarded expression of a man who prefers observing to being observed. A self-portrait done in 1915 seems more revelatory, though, perhaps because it features Repin actively working in his studio. In this later portrait, Repin’s face and physical stance appear transfixed. He wears a curved palette fitted around his waist and is fully focused on the canvas before him, leaning toward it with an almost courtly grace.
Ironically, by this time Repin had experienced a loss of use of his right arm from many arduous years of painting, with a need to develop the skills of his left hand instead. In his 1915 self-portrait, Repin reaches toward the canvas with his right hand, but the left hand holds a brush. His posture is still slim and youthful but his hair is graying, all contrasting elements which possibly indicate that this was an uncertain juncture in Repin’s life, as the confident abilities of the past gave way to the challenges of the future.
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