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Ilya Repin enjoyed more fame and recognition during his lifetime than any other Russian artist born in the nineteenth century. Repin’s position in the world of pictorial art was comparable to that of Leo Tolstoy in the world of letters. For twenty-five years, every new picture by Repin was awaited with bated breath, and the publication of his essays, especially those written at the turn of the century, always caused a stir in the cultural life of the country.

Acutely aware of the social problems of his day and in tune with the restless spirit of the times, Repin produced works that contained all the essential features of late nineteenth century Russian realism and it was in part thanks to him that Russian art came to play a significant role in European culture. Even early on in his career, the artist’s pictures attracted the attention of critics at international exhibitions. They recognised in his work the beginnings of a creative search which was to enrich the general development of critical realism in European art. When Repin produced his first independent works, it became clear that a form of art was taking root in Russia which was imbued with civic feeling and akin to the work of such major realists as Courbet in France, Menzel in Germany, and Munkacsy in Hungary.

The creative world of Repin possessed a special spiritual integrity, which existed not despite of, but because of the diversity of the artist’s creative goals and the breadth of his grasp of reality. This integrity was inseparably bound up with the general character of Russian artistic culture in the second half of the nineteenth century striving to realise its social and historical mission. As is the case with many great masters, Repin had certain favourite subjects, motifs and images, and a limited circle of people whose portraits he especially liked to paint. But the deep sense of purpose in his aesthetics went further than this, for he possessed first and foremost the great artistic gift to sense the spirit of the age and to see the way in which this spirit was reflected in the lives and characters of individuals. It does not particularly flatter the artist to say that the figures in his canvases and portraits belong to their time; the same could be said regarding the work of any of his contemporaries, even the mediocre ones. The figures in Repin’s paintings and drawings are the historical reality, with all its hopes and suffering, its spiritual energy and its painful contradictions.

“As in life” is an expression often used to describe the distinctive quality of Repin’s work. This expression does indeed reflect the essential principles of tone and style in his creative legacy, and yet, when allocated the role of general characteristic, it oversimplifies the nature of Repin’s realism. This view fails to grasp the main thing – the artist’s strong creative will, the directness of his conception, his tremendous technical mastery, in short, everything which causes real life to assume on his canvases the form of great art. In order to understand the great transformative power of Repin’s artistic language one has to penetrate the creative world from which such works as the Portrait of Modest Mussorgsky, Unexpected Return, Religious Procession in Kursk Province, and the Portrait of Polina Strepetova emerged.

Nadia Repina Painting Ceramics, 1891.

Charcoal on paper, 43.8 × 34.2 cm.

State Art Museum Abramtsevo, Abramtsevo, Russia.

Portrait of the Philosopher and Poet Vladimir Soloviev, 1891.

Pencil on paper, 34.3 × 23.6 cm.

Brodsky House Museum, St Petersburg.

The search for truth and the search for an ideal led Repin along various paths, and was tempered by various aspects of the artist’s own social and spiritual experiences and certain elements in the national cultural tradition. As was the case with most representatives of the Russian realist school of the second half of the nineteenth century, Repin most often selected dramatic conflicts rooted in reality for his works, drawn either from contemporary life or from the historical past. Much less often he used mythological images in his work, but when they do occur they are used with the same strong sense of purpose. Some of his pictures, based on Biblical subjects or Christian mythology, are justifiably counted among his greatest works. When dealing with the subjects of Repin’s works, it is important to grasp the logic of their co-existence and interconnection, their relationship with a general set of conceptions regarding the meaning of human life. One should constantly remember that Repin’s work is like an intricate multidimensional structure, rooted both in the creative individuality of the artist himself and in the complex artistic consciousness of his time.

Ilya Yefimovich Repin was born in 1844, in the small Ukrainian town of Chuguyev, the son of a private in the Uhlan Regiment stationed there. Later, at various times in the course of his long life, he would recollect with distaste the military settlements where he spent his early years, specifically their regimentation and iron discipline. These childhood memories undoubtedly played quite an important role in the formation of the artist’s deep democratic convictions. In 1872, Repin wrote to his friend, the critic Vladimir Stasov, regarding the mission of the artistic intelligentsia in the social life of the country: “Now it is the peasant who is judge and so it is necessary to represent his interests. (That is just the thing for me, since I am myself, as you know, a peasant, the son of a retired soldier who served twenty-seven hard years in Nicholas I’s army.)”[1]

Portrait of Actress Eleonora Duse, 1891.

Charcoal on canvas, 103 × 139 cm.

The Tretyakov State Gallery, Moscow.

Early one grey November morning, a young Cossack from the Government of Kharkov knocked at the portals of the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts in the city by the Neva. He was pale and shy of manner, with thick masses of brown hair clustering about brow and ears, and under his arm carried a portfolio of sketches. The lad had journeyed all the way from Chuguev, an isolated village amid the steppes of Little Russia, his entire capital consisting of forty rubles, and a consuming desire to become a painter. Born on July 24^th in 1844, the son of a military father and a gentle, solicitous mother, Ilya Yefimovich Repin early displayed marked capacity for graphic and plastic expression. Whilst a mere child he used to draw pictures for his sister and her playmates, as well as cut figures out of cardboard and model animals in wax. Though delicate, he was sent to the communal school, where his mother was a teacher, and later attended the nearby Military Topographical Institute, but on the closing of the latter, he was apprenticed at the age of thirteen to Anton Bunakov, a local painter of sacred images. So rapid was the boy’s progress, that within three years he was able to support himself, receiving anywhere from two to five, and even as high as twenty rubles for a religious composition or the likeness of some worthy villager. Pious muzhiks and pompous rural dignitaries would come from a hundred versts or more to see his ikoni or secure his services as ecclesiastical decorator, the most famous of his efforts being a fervid and dramatic St Simeon. It was while working in the church of Sirotin that Repin first heard of the eager, ambitious life of the capital, with its opportunities so far beyond the limitations of provincial endeavour. Certain of his colleagues told him not only of the Academy, but of Kramskoy, the leader of the new movement, who had lately paid a visit to Ostrogorsk, bringing with him the atmosphere of the city and the ferment of fresh social and artistic ideas.

Raising of Jairus’ Daughter, 1871.

Oil on canvas, 229 × 382 cm.

The Russian Museum, St Petersburg.

His arrival in the capital coincided with one of the most significant events in Russian cultural life in the 1860s – a major demonstration by young artists who challenged their academic teachers and insisted that art had the right and duty to follow truth in life. This was the famous 1863 “Rebellion of the Fourteen” at the Academy of Arts, when fourteen final-year students took a stand against attempts to reduce the social aspects of creative work, and to regiment its development through outdated academic dictates. They only had one demand, but a highly significant one: to be allowed to choose the subject of their graduation work. When this demand was rejected by the administration of the Academy, the students resigned from the Academy en masse. And so the year 1863 became an important milestone in the history of Russian art, marking a new stage in the social selfawareness of artists and their understanding of their professional aims.

The works Repin produced during his years at the Academy of Arts suggest a certain dichotomy in his creative efforts. As a student, he followed the obligatory academic programme, with subjects far removed from ordinary hopes and fears, from “empirical” reality. However, as a young artist highly receptive to impressions of life, he had no intention of cutting himself off from that reality. He tried his hand, not without success, at unaffected “domestic” genre scenes (Preparation for the Examination), made lyrical portraits of people close to him (Portrait of Vera Shevtsova, 1869), and in his final years as a student worked long and hard on Barge Haulers on the Volga, a picture of social import which brought the young Academy graduate European fame.

Yet all these early works, whether “set pieces” produced for the Academy or intimate portraits done for his own personal satisfaction, share certain common features, a common sphere of interests and technical experimentation. The picture on a Gospel theme, The Raising of Jairus’ Daughter, is highly significant in this regard. It was painted for an Academy competition and earned Repin a gold medal and the associated travelling scholarship. In creating this monumental canvas, Repin conformed both to academic demands and, at the same time, transcended them. He perceived the “elevated style” cultivated by the Academy not as a kind of system of rules, but as an interesting tradition, bound up with the ability of art to attain a sublime, miraculous spiritual force. We can point here even more specifically to one of the prototypes Repin clearly had in mind when he created The Raising of Jairus’s Daughter – Alexander Ivanov’s celebrated painting The Apparition of Christ to the People. Repin had a truly deep respect for Ivanov and must, undoubtedly, have heard much about him from the man who was his first teacher in St Petersburg and who later became a close friend, Ivan Kramskoi. The austerity of the composition, the harmonious balance of colours and the restraint of movement and gesture all serve to underline the deep, solemn significance of the subject in this work of the young artist.

The Raising of Jairus’ Daughter (detail), 1871.

Oil on canvas, 229 × 382 cm.

The Russian Museum, St Petersburg.

Alexandr Ivanov, The Apparition of Christ to the People, 1837–1857.

Oil on canvas, 540 × 750 cm.

The Tretyakov State Gallery, Moscow.

A characteristic feature of Repin’s talent – the persistent search for new approaches to technique and content that would give his work fullness and depth – can also be seen in those early works of a totally different kind, which were directly inspired by real life. The Barge Haulers, on which Repin worked for a long time, is a very clear example.

Unless you chance to be familiar with the Russian art of the day, it is difficult to grasp the distance which separates the Barge Haulers on the Volga from that which came before. At one stroke the clear-eyed Cossack placed himself at the head of the new movement. He went direct to nature and character, not to the arid formalism of academic tradition. The general effect of the canvas is compelling in its sheer veracity of observation and statement. The composition is effective, the various types are accurately individualised, and about these sun-scorched bargemen, who sullenly pull on the same sagging tow-line, radiates the genuine light of the outdoors, not the bitumen and brown sauce of the galleries. While it is impossible to overlook the fact that the Barge Haulers on the Volga is what the Teutons call a Tendenzbild – a picture with a purpose – it cannot be said that the didactic or humanitarian elements outdo the pictorial appeal. Imbued with a certain deep-rooted pity for the downtrodden, the painting stands upon its own merits as a resolute example of realism. The artist’s triumph was in fact complete and his fame as sudden and widespread as that of the young officer who, years before, had penned with searching verity The Cossacks and Sevastopol Sketches.

Barge Haulers on the Volga (1870–1873) was the first picture Repin completed after leaving the Academy of Arts. It was immediately acclaimed by contemporaries, including Fiodor Dostoyevsky and the critic Vladimir Stasov. This work is an early, but vivid expression of one of the most valuable qualities found in the creative work of the Russian intelligentsia – a feeling of personal responsibility for the hard lot of the common people and the historical destiny of the country. It was this position as both artist and concerned citizen which gave Repin’s work its distinctive character: it found expression in his monumental canvases, in his more modest studies and sketches, and even in his trial jottings.

Incidentally, bearing in mind this aspect of Repin, it is more appropriate to speak not of the single final version of the painting, but of the whole series of works in oil and in pencil.

Ivan Kramskoi, Self-Portrait, 1867.

Oil on canvas, 52.7 × 44 cm.

The Tretyakov State Gallery, Moscow.

Repin worked on this canvas for several years during which he travelled more than once to the Volga, studying the people who had come there from all corners of Russia to earn a hard living as barge haulers. The young artist would spend many hours closely observing them at their daily toil. But he was also attracted by secondary motifs which had a romantic overtone, such as the raft men’s courageous battle with the elemental force of the river.

The sketches and studies for Barge Haulers reveal an interesting peculiarity which was to become characteristic of Repin’s method of working on a painting. Sometimes his basic idea sprang from his first impression of something seen in real life (as was the case with Barge Haulers). On other occasions the basic theme was the outcome of reflections on Russia’s history or the social and religious destiny of the individual. Between the “idea” and the “soil” – that is how one might describe the mental and spiritual sphere in which all Repin’s most significant concepts arose. In either case, however, given the logic of the development of the subject, on the one hand, and the logic of the human characters, on the other, the two elements which determined the basic idea of his picture often compelled him to produce several versions of one painting, making changes in both content and technique. In Barge Haulers, which was completed at the juncture of two decades in Russian painting that differed greatly with regard to social and aesthetic ideas, this distinctive aspect of Repin’s creative method is expressed with the assertive directness of youth.

The final version of the picture is far removed from the original concept. A simple feeling of sympathy for the barge haulers developed into a picture which anticipated essential features of Russian realism in the 1870s and ‘80s. The effect of hard physical labour seems to emphasise rather than obliterate the individuality of the barge haulers. The leader of the group, Kanin, has the dignity of an ancient philosopher sold into slavery, and his bearing illustrates the extent to which the artist respected the inner world of these men and reflects his belief that the spiritual strength of man cannot be broken even by heavy toil. It was no accident that Repin, after trying out many different versions of the same motif – the slow, staggering movement of a group of people – finally struck on an arrangement in which the barge haulers tramping the sandy bank appear to dominate the boundless expanse of the Volga. The artist achieved the effect through compositional means that are still rather overly direct, but his aim is clear, and it was that aim which placed Repin among those who were exploring new ways of portraying ordinary people.

In 1873, Repin made use of his travelling scholarship. He spent a few months travelling around Italy, but then lived and worked in France right up until his return in 1876. In Paris he visited the first exhibition of the Impressionists, and became immersed in the atmosphere of the heated debate over this new direction in European art. The young Repin studied the collections in the great museums in depth. He spent the summer months with other Russian artists in the small northern French seaside resort of Veules, trying to learn as many lessons as possible directly from nature.

Ivan Kramskoi, Christ in the Desert, 1872.

Oil on canvas, 180 × 210 cm.

The Tretyakov State Gallery, Moscow.

Golgotha (The Crucifixion), 1869.

Oil on canvas, 80 × 99 cm.

Museum of Russian Art, Kiev.

Repin’s work from this three-year period abroad includes landscape studies, several interesting portraits and two large multi-figure compositions, A Paris Cafe (1875) and Sadko in the Underwater Kingdom. These and letters back to Russia reveal the range of the young painter’s creative interests. He was not a particularly fervent supporter of the new French school, but on the other hand, he was far from joining in the rigorous criticism voiced by some of his Russian colleagues who tended to look on Impressionism as a dangerous departure from reality. Repin greatly valued the artistic and cultural heritage of France, carefully studying that tradition and trying to understand its role in contemporary art. A Paris Cafe is, in this sense, a sort of experiment, an attempt to put down on canvas his impressions of French life and French painting.

By the summer of 1876 Repin was home once more. He settled for a short period near St Petersburg and produced the beautiful, lyrical painting On the Turf Seat. This was in a sense a summary of his Paris experiences and the most impressionistic work Repin ever produced. The intimate motif (the artist’s children, his wife and her relations out for a breath of fresh air) allowed Repin to convey the poetry of the summer landscape on a still, warm day.

Job and his Friends, 1869.

Oil on canvas, 133 × 199 cm.

The Russian Museum, St Petersburg.

In the autumn, the artist returned to his home town, Chuguyev, but after a year he moved to Moscow. He was a frequent guest at Abramtsevo, an estate near Moscow, where he was one of the most active members of the “Mamontov circle”, named after its founder, the famous patron of the arts, Savva Mamontov. Many great Russian artists, including Victor Vasnetsov, Vasily Polenov, Valentin Serov and Mikhail Vrubel, were active in what was becoming one of the centres of Russian cultural life. The circle embraced a whole range of creative activities – painting, theatre, music, folk art – and was free of that slightly ascetic truth seeking characteristic of the young “rebels” of 1863 in St Petersburg. The environment of the Abramtsevo colony and acquaintance with the life of the local area further stimulated Repin’s full-blooded response to reality. Here he found fresh fodder for his constant desire to strengthen the link between his own creative personality and the everyday existence of the people. The most significant and productive period in Repin’s career began when he moved to St Petersburg in 1882. In the following decade, he produced most of his famous works. He became a member of the Itinerants’ Society (the Society for Itinerant Art Exhibitions), a group of artists which brought together all the main currents in Russian realist art of the second half of the nineteenth century, and which played a considerable role in democratic culture in Russia. Itinerant exhibitions caused the visitors to think about themselves and the general lot of their country. By this time the picture of the world which art was presenting had lost its Romantic light-heartedness, its wilful egocentricity. The theme of destiny became the religious and philosophical-cum-moral orientation in the world depicted, the core which shaped the whole. This theme was capable of drawing on ideas of social determinism as well the great mysteries of existence in all its different forms, from the national and historic to the domestic and the personal.

St Nicholas Saves Three Innocents from Death, 1888.

Oil on canvas, 215 × 196 cm.

The Russian Museum, St Petersburg.

Get Thee Behind Me Satan! (sketch), 1890–1900.

Oil on cardbord, 21.7 × 40.5 cm.

The Russian Museum, St Petersburg.

On each occasion, the appearance of Repin’s works at the annual exhibitions of the society became a social and artistic event. In his pictures, or at least in his most important ones, Repin tackled problems which were of concern to the progressive circles of Russia. The artist’s constant desire was to understand the Russian mode of life and to interpret it in his own way; to show “the peculiarities of Russian tastes, images and notions, in fact, to do something which has never been done before”.[2] Two aspects of Repin’s talent should be singled out above all. They are, firstly, an innate feeling for the life of ordinary people, for their everyday concerns, their joys and sorrows, and, secondly, a persistent search for “truth”, for the meaning of human existence. Repin was capable of dashing off dozens of sketches for his own pleasure, deriving enjoyment from everyday scenes or the expressive possibilities of objects. But on the other hand, he would sometimes paint one figure several times before arriving at a solution which satisfied him. This was true of the face of the main figure in Unexpected Return, through whom Repin tried to convey the moral and philosophical content of the scene.

Religious Procession in Kursk Province, 1880–1883.

Oil on canvas, 175 × 280 cm.

The Tretyakov State Gallery, Moscow.

Pilgrim (study for Procession amongst the Oak Trees), 1881.

Oil on canvas, 40.5 × 26 cm.

Savitsky Art Gallery, Penza.

Though he would often, as did his colleagues Vasnetsov and Surikov, glance backward across the surging centuries for some picturesque setting, never after his apprentice days did he choose a subject that was not thoroughly Muscovite. Whatever else it may have been, the art of Repin was, and continued to be throughout his career, essentially nationalistic in aim and appeal. It is absorbing to follow from canvas to canvas the unfolding of Repin’s pictorial power. His method is the reverse of impressionism. His principal works are not the result of a single, swift transcription of something vividly seen or spontaneously apprehended. They are the outcome of prolonged study and adjustment. As many as a hundred preliminary sketches were made for The Cossacks’ Reply, of which, during an interval of some ten years, he painted three separate versions. The theme in fact haunted him in the same manner as the great romanticist Bocklin lived for so long under the spell of his Island of the Dead. Repin was never satisfied with the result of his efforts. He constantly strives to attain more effective grouping and arrangement, and more eloquent colouristic power. While based upon direct observation, the larger realistic and historical compositions appear to assume their final form in response to some inner pictorial necessity.

These qualities of Repin’s realism were fully revealed in the works during the Chuguyev and Moscow periods of his career. With all the energy of a man returning to his native element, Repin seized on many different aspects of a world he had known since childhood. Some of the works of this time remained in sketch form (In a Volost Administration Office,), whereas others penetrated so deeply into the artist’s creative consciousness that they reappeared over the following decades as independent works, enriched by the artist’s spiritual and professional experience. Although the subject-matter of these works – peasant Russia – remained all-important, one could nonetheless distinguish new aspects on every occasion.

The Russo-Turkish war of 1877–1878 furnished him with several themes, and in what is known as his nihilist cycle, comprising Putting a Propagandist Under Arrest, and Unexpected Return, he portrayed with penetrating truth and intensity that smouldering social volcano which has been responsible for so many decades of heroism and heartbreak. Among the works of this period are two that merit special consideration: Vechornitsy, or, as it is popularly called, Ukrainian Peasant Gathering, and the Religious Procession in Kursk Province, which was later supplemented by a somewhat similar Procession. Nowhere does Repin’s Ukrainian origin betray itself more sympathetically than in his picturing of these simple-hearted merrymakers who gather at a humble traktir (Russian tea) to pass the night before their wedding dancing to the tune of violin, pipe, and balalaika. In Procession, with its struggling, seething mass of humanity – its obese, gold-robed priests, benighted peasants, wretched beggars and cripples, cruel-mouthed officials, and inflated rural dignitaries, Repin seems to have offered us a pictorial synthesis of Russia. While a scene one might witness any day on the dust-laden highways of the southern districts, the picture possesses a deeper significance. In essence it is a condemnation, and, like the Burlaki, it is all the more severe because it is clothed in the irrefragable language of fact.

The Hunchback, 1880.

Pencil and watercolour on paper, 61 × 52 cm.

The Russian Museum, St Petersburg.

Diego Velázquez, Portrait of Pope Innocent X, 1650.

Oil on canvas, 140 × 120 cm.

Doria Pamphilj Gallery, Rome.

The Archdeacon, 1877.

Oil on canvas, 124 × 96 cm.

The Tretyakov State Gallery, Moscow.

Édouard Manet, Berthe Morisot with a Bouquet of Violets, 1872.

Oil on canvas, 55.5 × 40.5 cm.

Musée d’Orsay, Paris.

Portrait of Vera Repina, the Artist’s Wife, 1876.

Oil on canvas, 59 × 49 cm.

The Russian Museum, St Petersburg.

Repin’s contemporaries remarked more than once on his special ability to capture everyday peasant life in his art. Kramskoi wrote to Stasov in December 1876: “Repin is capable of depicting the Russian peasant exactly as he is. I know many artists who have painted peasants, some of them very well, but none of them ever came close to what Repin does.”[3] Much later, in 1908, Leo Tolstoy remarked that Repin “depicts the life of the people much better than any other Russian artist”.[4] Such remarks are frequent in critical articles and commentaries of the time on the Itinerants’ exhibitions.

Repin’s reputation was founded on his Barge Haulers, the artist’s thoughts on life in the Russian countryside after the reforms of the 1860s and on the lot of peasants who had to leave the land to take on seasonal work. However, this early canvas, in spite of the fact that it was based on preparatory work in open air, still shows a certain contradiction between the artist’s desire to remain true to life and his rationalistic approach to the composition of the picture which consequently acquired a somewhat spectacular quality. In the Chuguyev and Moscow years, the peasant theme, at first a simple expression of the artist’s social orientation, became an integral part of his realism.

In 1877, Repin conceived a multi-figure composition representing the scene of a religious procession. He was attracted to this subject primarily because of the opportunity it afforded to depict a multitude of people of diverse character and appearance. The content of this composition and the complicated process involved in its completion will be discussed in more detail below. As a preliminary study, Repin painted a portrait of Ivan Ulanov, the archdeacon of Chuguyev. The result was a work far superior to what was usually achieved in such studies. Repin’s Archdeacon was soon shown at an Itinerants’ Society exhibition where it was highly praised.

Repin’s contemporaries were astonished by the amazingly plastic quality of the picture and the artist’s ability to reproduce the vital force of human flesh. Repin himself saw in it “the echo of a pagan priest”, the “pagan” element completely dominating the picture. Archdeacon undoubtedly betrayed his knowledge of Western European art. One needs to think not of the French Impressionists – the aim of the painting is diametrically opposed to the tenets of French Impressionist art – but rather of the great masters of the seventeenth century, above all, Rembrandt and Velazquez. The artist’s desire to portray a certain type of man remained linked to the essence of the model. The strength of the living energy conveyed places the portrait of Ivan Ulanov on the borderline between art and action itself. One has the impression that the irrational elemental nature depicted is barely constrained by the artist’s wilful act of creation. While admiring Repin’s skills, contemporaries noted the awesome, almost magical power of the image. The flourish with which this portrait was executed, intimates not only the boldness of the great artist, but also some sort of frenzied invocation, the anger of the animal-tamer. The artistic power of Repin’s Archdeacon has something of the expressivity of a man-made idol. The work provoked the following comment from the composer Modest Mussorgsky, who perceived the elemental forces contained within the archdeacon’s figure: “What fearsome sweeps of the brush, what an abundance of space!”[5] This “pagan” motif probably never reoccurred with such consistent force in Repin’s work. But it is present in many of his ideas, reflecting an important aspect of the artist’s thoughts about Russia. In these thoughts two elements dominate, and both vie and interact with each other. One is a delight in the deep, primordial, “earthy” force of Russian reality; the other an awareness of the conflict between that force and the spiritual ideals of the age. In fact, Repin’s treatment of the peasant theme best illustrates this.

Storm on the Volga, 1871–1891.

Oil on canvas, 55 × 102 cm.

The Russian Museum, St Petersburg.

Repin travelled many different artistic roads in his attempts to grasp life in the Russian countryside after Alexander II’s reforms. He never lost touch with the people, with the social and moral outlook of the Russian peasant. In fact, this involvement was characteristic of the Itinerants as a body. Repin’s conceptions of epic scenes and vast multi-figure compositions are always accompanied by a desire to incorporate different typical characters.

The artist was intensively seeking an image of his Russia – a Russia which lived in the expectation of divine benevolence. It was this innate feature of the popular consciousness which he tried to come to grips with. The Revealed Icon, The Miraculously Created Icon and A Religious Procession are the names Repin gives these different versions of his concept, each time linking – and this is very significant – the religious, ritual side of public life with historical and cultural symbolic meanings. The general narrative and compositional scheme at once took on a certain dramatic aspect: he wanted to show the different attitudes of the people towards the miracle-working icon at the head of the procession. This dominates the preliminary sketches for the canvas. Later on, however, the concept seems to have dictated the very process of its realisation, and forced the artist to change his original scheme. Thus two versions arose, differing both in form and in content.

Vassili Grigorievitch Perov, Troika (Apprentices Fetch Water), 1866.

Oil on canvas, 123.5 × 167.5 cm.

The Tretyakov State Gallery, Moscow.

Barge Haulers on the Volga, 1870–1873.

Oil on canvas, 131.5 × 281 cm.

The Russian Museum, St Petersburg.

Portrait of Leo Tolstoy, 1887.

Oil on canvas, 124 × 88 cm.

The Tretyakov State Gallery, Moscow.

Ivan Kramskoi, Portrait of Leo Tolstoy, 1873.

Oil on canvas, 98 × 79.5 cm.

The Tretyakov State Gallery, Moscow.

Repin was to return many times to his first version, which has come to be known as Religious Procession in an Oak Wood, begun in 1877, changing individual elements and even whole groups of figures. Some scholars have rightly suggested that here he depicts the procession as if it were part of some outdated superstition. It was for this canvas that the artist needed the “pagan” image of the archdeacon. The procession itself is pageant, more reminiscent of rural mummers than of a serious ritual act.

The second version of the picture, which Repin began later and completed in 1883, was destined to become the more popular of the two. It was called Religious Procession in Kursk Province (1880–1883). The story told in the work has been slightly altered: in a time of drought a crowd of people is moving across the parched earth. They are carrying a miracle-working icon to a nearby church or monastery, carrying it in such a way as to observe at least the outward forms of the ritual procession. It is not a homogeneous gathering – the viewer will immediately detect a great variety of social types and characters. Depicted here is not just a stream of people but the flow of life itself, a life bereft of joy, full of profound contradictions, social hostility and inequality, but a life which never stops moving for a moment. By placing rough peasant clothes and colourful holiday caftans next to a range of city attire, Repin precisely illustrates the differences in class and wealth between those participating in the procession. The behaviour of the people and their attitudes to what is happening around them, suggests equally vividly another “hierarchy” within the crowd: from the sanctimonious piety of the gentry to the impetuous absorption of the hunchback.

One aspect of the setting is very important, as has often been pointed out. In the first version the crowd is passing through leafy woodland; in the second it is moving along a dusty hillside covered with bare tree stumps. This image of wasteland was a significant sign of the times; when Repin returned home to Chuguyev after his trip abroad, he wrote in distress: “Houses and fences seem to have sunk into the earth as if in a deep sleep, roofs have sagged… Only the exploiters of the land, the kulaks, are not sleeping. They have cut down my beloved woods, so full of childhood memories.”[6]