The largest and most complete exhibition of works by Russia's greatest oil painter were unveiled at the Russian Museum last Monday.
It is the second leg of a worldwide tour of masterpieces painted by Ilya Repin who was born 150 years ago this year. The Jubilee exhibition opened in Moscow in January and will continue on to Finland where Repin died in 1930.
A realist painter whose major works were executed in the last two decades of the 19th century Repin captured on canvas the social and spiritual chords of his time.
His style was flamboyant, lavish, rich and grandiose and his subjects varied greatly from tragic and heroic themes taken from Russian history to recording political changes in Russia at the turn of the century.
Repin was also an accomplished portrait painter and painted many of the most important writers, thinkers and politicians of his day.
Among his most famous and internationally known paintings which can be seen at the exhibition are the "Resurrection of Jairus Daughter" 1871, "Sadko" 1876, the hardened and suffering "Bargemen on the Volga" 1870-3 and the bitter face of anger portrayed in "Tsarevna Sofia" painted in 1879.
The last two capture the realistic essence of Russian tragic suffering and cruelty and echo two common themes common in pre-industrialised Russian Society.
"Bargemen" is the very essence of the medieval notion of serfdom as weathered and weary men are shackled liked oxen to a barge which they pull up the River Volga. It sums up everything abhorrent about the Tsarist Autocracy.
The second portrays the common Russian theme of political consequences. After a failed attempt to usurp power, the Tsarevna Sofia Alexseevna, sister to Peter the Great, is locked up in the Novadevichy Monastery by her brother.
What makes this exhibition so special is that for the first time in more than 40 years a cohesive collection of this great master's work has been assembled together under one roof.
Secondly the exhibition contains lesser known examples of paintings which have until now remained in private collections and in galleries overseas including the New York Metropolitan Museum, private collections in Helsinki and works from galleries in Stockholm and Czechoslovakia.
The exhibition also contains over 300 pencil drawings and collections of photographs and letters written while abroad in Paris and in Italy between 1874-5.
What this collection shows above all is the grandeur and versatility of this artist who was born into a military family in Chuguyev in 1844.
The variety of his themes, the richness in which he conveys them and his expressive means is simply staggering. Repin, who painted most of his works in and around St Petersburg always had a close affinity with his time and people.
He was a man of wide interests and subtle mind and mixed with his famous intellectual contemporaries: writers like Tolstoy, composer Glazunov, art historian and painter Stasov and scientist Mendeleyev.
This exhibition marks the main stages in his development which began at the Risovalny Art School from 1863 and continued at the prestigious Russian Academy from 1864-71 where he was awarded the prestigious Gold Medal.
A teacher at the Academy from 1894-1907 his pupils included painters Ostromova-Lebedovo, Grabar, Brodsky and Grekov.
Married twice, and unusually for a Russian - a vegetarian - he retired to Penaty at Repino in 1900 where he died in 1930 in what became part of Finland after boundary changes.
It was here that Repin created many famous canvases including the massive "Meeting of the State Council" "Bloody Sunday", "Pushkin's Examination at the Lyceum". portraits of writers Lev Tolstoy and Maxim Gorky.
This hospitable estate was often visited by outstanding figures in Russian literature and art and science, writer Vladimir Korolenko, composer Alexander Glazunov, scientist Ivan Pavlov and poet Vladmimir Mayakvosky.
Other masterpieces worth noting in the exhibition are the "Zaprozhye Cossacks" composing a letter to the Turkish Sultan which took the artist more than 12 years to complete.
Evidence of Repin's acceptance in court circles can be seen with an impressive portrait of Tsar Nicholas II, a painting of the monarch visiting a hospital with his wife in 1896, their wedding in 1994 and the huge painting of Nicholas with his ministers 1905 which takes up an entire room!
Repin's work., because of its profound social realism and vivid documentation of key historical events in Russia's turbulent history, is an outstanding contribution to Russian and world culture. Anyone interested in Russian art and history would be foolish to miss it.
