ILJA JEFIMOVICH

REPIN (1844– )  , Russian painter, was born in 1844 at Tschuguev in the department of Charkov, the son of parents in straitened circumstances . He learned the rudiments of art under a painter of saints named Bunakov, for three years gaining his living at this humble craft . In 1863 he obtained a studentship at the Academy of Fine Arts of St Petersburg, where he remained for six years, winning the gold medal and a travelling scholarship which enabled him to visit France and Italy . He returned to Russia after a short absence, and devoted himself exclusively to subjects having strong national characteristics . In 1894 he became professor of historical painting at the St Petersburg Academy . Repin's paintings are powerfully drawn, with not a little imagination and with strong dramatic force and characterization . A brilliant colourist, and a portrait-painter of the first rank, he also became known as a sculptor and etcher of ability . His chief pictures are " Procession in the Government of Kiev," " Home-coming," " The Arrest," " Ivan the Terrible's murder of his Son," and, best known of all, " The Reply of the Cossacks to Sultan Mahmoud IV." The portraits of the Baroness V . I. t)lskiil, of Anton Rubinstein and of Count Leo Tolstoy are among his best achievements in this class . The Tretiakov gallery at Moscow contains a very large collection of his work . See " Professor Repin," by Prince Bojidar Karageorgevich, in the Magazine of Art, xxiii. p . 783 (1899) ; " Russian Art," a paper by E .

Brayley Hodgetts in the Proceedings of the Anglo-Russian Literary Society (5th of May 1896) ; " Ilja Jefimovich Repin," by Julius Norden, in Velhagen and Klasing's Monatshefte, xx. p. i (1905); also R . Muther, History of Modern Painting (ed . 1907), iv . 272 . (E . F .