Did you know that Ilya Repin was not allowed into the Tretyakov Gallery?

Everyone knows his realistic art masterpieces "Barge Haulers on the Volga" and "Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks" from one’s childhood. Repin works are the windows into the other epochs and into the people's lives, they face the deep and complex of Russian soul and culture. Repin invaluably contributed to the Russian art. What is he and where is he real Repin, let’s try to understand it now.

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Have you heard that Repin had a ban on visiting the Tretyakov Gallery? 

It was the consequence of his conflict with the founder and owner of the Gallery – Pavel Tretyakov. Be sure that his paintings could be better, Repin improved them even the days after they had been displayed. Once started, he could not stop sometimes, and rewrote his plots significantly. To cut his aspiring for perfection the gallery owner had to order to let the painter not in.

What is the most famous painting by I.Repin?

"Unexpected Visitors"

The painting had hung peacefully in the Tretyakov Gallery for two years already, when there had a scandal broken out in 1887. I. Repin visted the gallery with a box of paints, the day of P. Tretyakov absence in Moscow, and quickly rewrote the head of the incoming character (it was originally a woman!). Tretyakov got enraged upon return when he had seen Repin's initiative. Next year P. Tretyakov sent the canvas back to I. Repin for correction. The final version satisfied both of them.

Historical painting by Repin "Ivan the Terrible and his son Ivan on November 16, 1581"

Historical painting by Repin "Ivan the Terrible and his son Ivan" got frankly a bad luck.

Ilya Repin had chosen the historical event from the year 1581 for its subject. The painter depicted the Russian king distraught on realizing his crime. He cradles his bloodied son, and the latter one meets the eternity with meekness and forgiveness.

In January 1913 the canvas was really assaulted. Abram Balashov, Old Believer icon-painter, stabbed the canvas with a knife three times while screaming: "Stop the bloodshed!" The painting was badly damaged, but I. Repin managed to fix the cuts together with his student.

In May 2018, a vandal broke the protective glass surrounding the painting with a metal fencing pole in the Tretyakov Gallery. The damage costed 20 million rubles by the gallery experts assessment at that time.

Media reports: After the restoration is completed, the painting will be exhibited in a special protective capsule on its former place in the I. E. Repin Hall of the Tretyakov Gallery.

Which Repin painting occupies the whole room?

It is a large-format canvas "Ceremonial Sitting of the State Council on 7 May 1901 Marking the Centenary of its Foundation" – 4x8 meters, that owns an entire hall in the Mikhailovsky (Michael's) Palace. It weighs about 600 kilograms.

Ilya Efimovich is an author of many works, but he has nothing to do with the painting "They sailed". And the painting with that name has never existed.

Once in the 1930s, a Sumy Art Museum hosted Repin exhibition. Some of the permanent collection things remained in their places, including the painting "Monks (Went wrong)" by L. Solovyov. The painting depicts monks who accidentally land to the bathing place of naked women. The visitors who came to Repin exhibition mistook it for his work. Since then, the expression "Repin's painting They sailed" has become a real idiom that characterizes the stalemate.

The Russian Museum in St. Petersburg collects 468 of the artist's works, and includes 260 drawings and watercolors, 133 paintings, 73 graphic works and two sculptures. "All the Repin", the largest exhibition in 2019, for comparison, exhibited about 300 works from 35 museum and private collections of Russia and Europe.

The library presents a selection of fascinating books for all the aesthetes, as a worthy alternative to museum trips. Besides that, you will learn a lot of interesting things from the distant past and even from the distant close to… Well, what to read about Repin.

The Far and Near, by Ilya Repin. To hear the Repin’s own voice, you have to read his memoirs, he definitely was a literary gifted painter.

Selected letters in two volumes, by Ilya Repin. Repin's letters are an amazing example of the epistolary genre. His lively speech, his sharp and often critical statements on any topic have preserved there. Here are both his personal mood and his personal impression, and, of course, his famous caustic remarks.

Ilya Repin, by Korney Chukovskiy. Repin and Chukovsky met in Kuokkala, they were dacha neighbours, and then became real friends. It was K. Chukovsky who convinced I. Repin to write memoirs "The Far and Near." Anyway, Chukovsky left his own brilliant memoir about Repin.

Memories of the Itinerants, by Minchenkov Yakov. Memories of the Itinerants (Wanderers) is not a research, but a bunch of impressions of a comrade, a colleague, and a collection of stories and curiosities to add subtle touches to the Repin portray. Minchenkov describes an "amazing duality" of I. Repin: "Today he said and did it the one way, but tomorrow he acted completely different" – so, "where is the truth, where is the real Repin?"

Ilya Repin, by Igor Grabar. The book looks like a real monument to the "first Russian artist". For his opus magnum the art historian was awarded the Stalin Prize in 1941.

Ilya Efimovich Repin, by Grigory Sternin. The book sufficiently details the features of Repin paintings with accuracy and provides many rare facts that are interesting disregard the ideology.

Ilya Repin in the "Penates", by Kirillina Elena Vladimirovna. In 1899 Ilya Repin bought a farmstead in Kuokkala (Repino settlement nowadays). The painter named his estate after the Roman gods of the family hearth — "Penates". The book compiles memories left by his students, friends and acquaintances (from 1900 to 1930).

Photo 1, Photo 2: My Tretyakova

Photo 3: Virtual Russian Museum

Photo 4: "Polenov Vasily" PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST I.E. REPIN, My Tretyakova