Ilya Repin

Ilya Yefimovich Repin was a Russian painter.

He was born into the family of a military settler, Yefim Vasilyevich Repin (1804–1884), in the town of Chuhuiv, Kharkov Governorate of the Russian Empire. He learned to read, write, and do arithmetic from a sexton and a church clerk. In 1855 he studied at a topographical school, but when the military settlements were abolished, it was closed. From the age of 13 he studied painting in Chuhuiv under I. Bunakov. In 1863 he entered the Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg. At the drawing school on the Exchange, Repin met I. N. Kramskoy, who became his mentor. He also studied under R. K. Zhukovsky. He studied successfully and in 1869 was awarded a small gold medal for the painting Job and His Friends. During his journey along the Volga in 1870, he painted a number of studies and sketches; based on some of them, he painted for Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich the picture Barge Haulers on the Volga, completed in 1873. This painting, depicting the arduous labor of the barge haulers pulling a barge, made a strong impression on the public and critics. One of Repin’s first paintings to gain wide recognition was the large group portrait Slavic Composers, executed to commission for the entrepreneur A. A. Porokhovshchikov. In 1872, for the programmatic work The Raising of the Daughter of Jairus, he received the Big Gold Medal and the right to six years of study in Italy and France, where he completed his artistic education. From 1873 Repin traveled abroad as a pensioner of the Academy, where the luminaries of old painting made a negative impression on him. In Paris he painted Parisian Cafe and the fairy-tale Sadko. He returned to Russia in the summer of 1876. In the autumn of the same year the artist returned to his native Chuhuiv, and a year later moved from there to Moscow. In 1878, while visiting Abramtsevo, Repin heard from a guest a story told by a Ukrainian historian about how the Turkish sultan had written to the Zaporozhian Cossacks