Ilya Repin became one of the most renowned artists in Russia in the 19th century.
87 Facts About Ilya Repin
2.
Ilya Repin is known for the revealing portraits he made of the leading literary and artistic figures of his time, including Mikhail Glinka, Modest Mussorgsky, Pavel Tretyakov, Pantaleon Szyndler, and especially Leo Tolstoy, with whom he had a long friendship.
3.
Ilya Repin's father had served in an Uhlan Regiment in the Russian army, and then sold horses.
4.
Ilya Repin failed at his first effort to enter the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts in Saint Petersburg, but went to the city anyway in 1863, audited courses, and won his first prizes in 1869 and 1871.
5.
Ilya Repin spent two years in Paris and Normandy, seeing the first Impressionist expositions and learning the techniques of painting in the open air.
6.
Ilya Repin welcomed the February Revolution in 1917, but was appalled by the violence and terror unleashed by the Bolsheviks following the October Revolution.
7.
Finland broke away from Russia in 1917, and Ilya Repin was unable to travel to St Petersburg, even for an exhibition of his own works in 1925.
8.
Ilya Repin died on 29 September 1930, at the age of 86, and was buried at the Penates.
9.
Ilya Repin's home is a museum and a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
10.
Ilya Repin was born on 24 July 1844 in the town of Chuguev, in the Kharkov Governorate of the Russian Empire, in the heart of the historical region of Sloboda Ukraine.
11.
Ilya Repin fought in the Russo-Persian War, the Russo-Turkish War and the Hungarian campaign.
12.
Ilya Repin had family ties to noblemen and officers; the Repins had six children and were moderately well-off.
13.
Ilya Repin showed a talent for drawing and painting, and when he was thirteen, his father enrolled him in the workshop of Ivan Bunakov, an icon painter.
14.
Ilya Repin restored old icons and painted portraits of local notables.
15.
Ilya Repin failed in his first attempt, but persevered, rented a small room in the city, and took courses in academic drawing.
16.
When Kramskoi founded the first independent union of Russian artists, Ilya Repin became a member.
17.
Ilya Repin met the influential critic Vladimir Stasov and painted a portrait of Vera Shevtsova, his own future wife.
18.
In 1870, with two other artists, Ilya Repin traveled to the Volga River to sketch landscapes and studies of barge haulers.
19.
Ilya Repin joined him on his travels, including a trip to Samara, where their first child, Vera, was born.
20.
The marriage was difficult, as Ilya Repin had numerous affairs, while Vera cared for the children.
21.
Ilya Repin's painting Barge Haulers of the Volga, shown at the Vienna International Exposition, brought him his first International attention.
22.
Ilya Repin rented an apartment in Montmartre at 13 rue Veron, and a small attic studio under a mansard roof at number 31 on the same street.
23.
Ilya Repin gave the young heroine a Russian face, surrounded by a strange and exotic setting.
24.
Ilya Repin wrote to his friend the civic Stasov: "This idea describes my present situation, and perhaps, the situation of all of our Russian art".
25.
Ilya Repin was in Paris in April 1874, when the first Impressionist exhibition was held.
26.
Ilya Repin moved to Moscow that year, and produced a wide variety of works including portraits of the painters Arkhip Kuindzhi and Ivan Shishkin.
27.
Ilya Repin became involved with the "Wanderers", an artistic movement founded in St Petersburg in 1863.
28.
Ilya Repin created a series of major historical works, including the Religious Procession in Kursk Governorate, which was presented at the 12th annual exposition of the Wanderers.
29.
Ilya Repin experimented with outdoor sunlight effects, apparently influenced by the impressionists and his outdoor studies in France.
30.
Ilya Repin regularly visited Tolstoy at his Moscow residence, and his country estate at Yasnaya Polyana.
31.
Ilya Repin painted him in four sittings, beginning four days before his death.
32.
When Moussorgsky died, Ilya Repin used the proceeds of the sale of the painting to erect a monument to the composer.
33.
Ilya Repin's portrait of Mikhail Glinka, composer of the opera "Ruslan and Ludmilla" was an unusual work for Repin.
34.
Ilya Repin frequented the art circle of Savva Mamontov, which gathered at Abramtsevo, his estate near Moscow.
35.
Ilya Repin's painting Religious Procession in Kursk Province was shown at the eleventh Itinerants' Society Exhibition.
36.
Ilya Repin visited Tolstoy at Yasnaya Polyana, and painted his portrait, and then took a long trip along the Volga and the Don, to the Cossack regions.
37.
Ilya Repin spent the winter in Italy and published his essays Letters on Art.
38.
Ilya Repin's paintings were exhibited in Saint Petersburg, at the Exhibition of Works of Creative Art.
39.
In 1890 Ilya Repin met Natalia Nordman, who became his common-law wife.
40.
Ilya Repin was the daughter of an admiral, a writer and feminist, an activist for the improvement of working conditions.
41.
Ilya Repin hosted vegetarian breakfasts for his guests, and very elaborate receptions on Wednesdays.
42.
Ilya Repin proceeded with the help of photographs and the aid of two of his students.
43.
Ilya Repin called 1905 "the year of disaster and shame".
44.
Ilya Repin resigned from his teaching post at the Academy of Fine Arts, and concentrated on painting.
45.
The movements toward democracy in the early 20th century inspired Ilya Repin, he joined the Constitutional Democratic Party, was offered the rank of Councillor of State, and was invited to take a seat in the Duma, the national assembly.
46.
Ilya Repin made a colourful painting of the celebration of the new Russian Constitution of 1905.
47.
Ilya Repin concentrated on writing his memoirs, which he finished in 1915.
48.
Ilya Repin visited St Peterburg to see expositions, including a 1909 show of works by the modernist Kandinsky.
49.
Ilya Repin visited Munich, the Tyrol, and Prague, and painted Natalia Nordman in a Tyrolese Hat and In the Sunlight: Portrait of Nadezhda Repina.
50.
Ilya Repin painted a portrait of the writer Leonid Andreyev and his work The Death of the Cossack Squadron Commander Zinovyev.
51.
Ilya Repin made sketches depicting government troops opening fire on a peaceful demonstration on 9 December 1905.
52.
Ilya Repin did sketches for portraits of Maxim Gorky and Vladimir Stasov and two portraits of Natalia Nordman.
53.
Ilya Repin illustrated Leonid Andreyev's story The Seven Who Were Hanged, and his painting The Cossacks from the Black Sea Coast was exhibited at the Itinerants' Society Exhibition.
54.
The Gopak, the last painting of Ilya Repin, painted on linoleum, because he could not get a canvas large enough.
55.
Ilya Repin's wife became ill with tuberculosis, and departed for treatment in Locarno, Switzerland.
56.
Ilya Repin refused assistance from her family and died in Switzerland in 1914.
57.
The border was closed, and Ilya Repin refused to return to Russia.
58.
Ilya Repin turned to Finland for new clients, painting a large group portrait of notable Finnish leaders and artists, including the architect Eliel Saarinen, the composer Jean Sibelius, and the future Finnish President Carl Gustav Mannerheim.
59.
Ilya Repin included the back of his own head in the painting.
60.
In 1916, Ilya Repin worked on his book of reminiscences, Far and Near, with the assistance of Korney Chukovsky.
61.
Ilya Repin welcomed the early phases of the Russian Revolution, namely the February Revolution of February 1917.
62.
Ilya Repin was so hostile to the new Soviet regime, that he even lashed out at their spelling "reform".
63.
Ilya Repin painted it with oil on linoleum, because he could not get a canvas large enough.
64.
Ilya Repin produced more than three hundred portraits in his career.
65.
Ilya Repin painted most of the notable political figures, writers and composers of his time.
66.
One exception was Dostoevsky, whose mysticism Ilya Repin did not appreciate at all.
67.
Ilya Repin preceded each portrait with six or seven sketches.
68.
Ilya Repin had to persuade a reluctant Tolstoy to be portrayed working in a field with bare feet, as he usually did.
69.
Ilya Repin persistently searched for new techniques and content to give his work more fullness and depth.
70.
Ilya Repin had a set of favorite subjects, and a limited circle of people whose portraits he painted.
71.
Ilya Repin used mythological images with a strong sense of purpose; some of his religious paintings are among his greatest.
72.
Ilya Repin began his works with sketches in pencil or charcoal, using lines and cross-hatching.
73.
Ilya Repin sometimes used drawings or paintings of his children to experiment with different points of view.
74.
Ilya Repin's works ranged from domestic scenes to small dramas, such as policemen arresting a young militant for distributing revolutionary tracts.
75.
Ilya Repin was a member of the committee, set up to create a monument to painter-poet Taras Shevchenko whom he called an "apostle of freedom".
76.
Ilya Repin illustrated novels such as Taras Bulba and Sorochinsky Fair by Nikolai Gogol and Zaporissya in the remains of ancient legends and people by Dmytro Yavornytsky, and drew numerous sketches of architecture as well as different popular aspects of Ukrainian culture.
77.
Ilya Repin helped the committee of the Visual Arts Union in Mykolaiv.
78.
Ilya Repin was an honorary member of Literature and Art Union, as well as Union of the Antiquities and Art in Kiev.
79.
Ilya Repin supported numerous painters, Murashko's art schools in Kiev, M Rajevska-Ivanova in Kharkiv, and the Art school in Odessa.
80.
Ilya Repin persistently searched for new techniques and content to give his work more fullness and depth.
81.
Ilya Repin had a set of favorite subjects, and a limited circle of people whose portraits he painted.
82.
Ilya Repin used mythological images with a strong sense of purpose; some of his religious paintings are among his greatest.
83.
Ilya Repin's method was the reverse of the general approach of impressionism.
84.
Ilya Repin was never satisfied with his works, and often painted multiple versions, years apart.
85.
Ilya Repin changed and adjusted his methods constantly in order to obtain more effective arrangement, grouping and coloristic power.
86.
Ilya Repin was the first Russian artist to achieve European fame using specifically Russian themes.
87.
Ilya Repin's 1873 painting Barge Haulers on the Volga, radically different from previous Russian paintings, made him the leader of a new movement of critical realism in Russian art.