Ilya Efimovich Repin is an internationally renowned artist who, with the help of painting, touched on topics that excited the public. A prominent representative of Russian painting of the XIX-XX centuries, a teacher, professor, one of the key figures of Russian realism, a full member of the Imperial Academy of Arts.
Biography
Childhood
Ilya Efimovich Repin was born on August 5, 1844 in Ukraine, in the Kharkov province, in the city of Chuguev. Father's name was Efim Vasilievich (lived 90 years). Each year, the head of the family was forced to go to the Donshchina for 300 miles (the territory of the Rostov Region), drove herds of horses from there to resell them. Three times participated in military campaigns in the Chuguevsky Ulansky regiment.
Mother was Tatyana Stepanovna (she lived 69 years). She was a competent woman, she read to children the works of Alexander Pushkin, Leo Tolstoy, Mikhail Lermontov, and she also organized a school for peasants. She highly valued knowledge, versed in painting, in poetry. But the family constantly had problems with finances, and the woman took on any of the dirtiest jobs to educate the kids.
Already in childhood, the future painter met with color, watercolor paints. They were brought to the Repin's house by Ilya's cousin Trofim Chaplygin. Since then, the idea of transforming the world has not left a child.
At 11 years old, the parents identified the boy in the then-prestigious Chuguev School of Topographers, where they taught children drawing and filming. At the age of 13, he was transferred to the icon-painting workshop, to the icon painter Ivan Bunakov. Even then, the talent of the future artist was manifested.
Youth
At 19, the young man decided to study at the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts. But the first time I couldn’t do it, so I had to get into an evening drawing school to improve my skills. Entering the Academy for the second time, the young man smiled on luck.
During the time spent in the walls of the educational institution, he made a lot of friends - this is the master of landscape Vasily Polenov, and professor of sculpture Mark Antokolsky, and critic Vladimir Stasov. But he considered Ivan Nikolaevich Kramskoy his main and beloved mentor.
Personal life of the master
The first marriage lasted fifteen years. Wife Vera Alekseevna gave birth to three girls and one boy. But Ilya Efimovich was ready to receive guests at any time, he was constantly surrounded by ladies who wanted to pose for new paintings. Wife salon guests were a burden. In one thousand eight hundred and eighty-eighth year, with a divorce, the eldest children remained with their father, the youngest - went to live with their mother.
The second wife of Ilya Efimovich was the writer Natalia Borisovna Nordman, who wrote under the pseudonym Severov. Their acquaintance happened in the artist’s workshop, where Nordman came along with Princess Maria Tenisheva. Later, the painter moved to her in the estate of Penates, located in Kuokkale. In 1914, having become ill with tuberculosis, Natalya left Kuokkala. She went to one of the foreign hospitals, refusing the financial assistance that her husband and his friends tried to provide her. She died in Locarno.
Creation
Repin succeeded in all genres - painting, graphics, sculpture. He created a wonderful school of painters, declared himself as a theorist of art and an outstanding writer. The three most famous paintings:
- "Barge Haulers on the Volga". The idea to paint a picture appeared in the late sixties, when he went to the Neva River and first saw the huts.
- "Ivan the Terrible kills his son." The music of N.A. inspired the creation of this painting by the artist. Rimsky-Korsakov. After he heard his new work "Revenge". Feelings were overwhelmed by the horrors of modernity, he wanted to find a way out of pain in history. It depicts the moment when Ivan the Terrible, inflicting a mortal blow to his son, is experiencing a tragic moment.
- "The Cossacks write a letter to the Turkish Sultan." The picture depicts the Zaporozhye Cossacks, who together make up a letter to the Ottoman Sultan. During the Russo-Turkish war, the sultan demanded to submit to him, to which he received a letter in which the Cossacks cruelly mocked him.
last years of life
After moving to Kuokkala, the painter was forced to lead a secluded life. He maintained contact with his former environment through letters. Every day the postman brought the artist many envelopes. Ilya Efimovich personally answered each of the letters.
After the October Revolution, when Kuokkala became Finnish territory, the painter was cut off from Russia. He made friends with Finnish colleagues and made considerable donations to local theaters and other cultural institutions. But at home, Repin did not become a stranger, moreover, he was declared a classic, and Stalin even equipped a delegation to return the artist to his homeland. Ilya Repin died on September 29, 1930 and was buried in Penata Manor Park.
