“They didn’t expect”: Repin’s painting in the context of other realistic paintings by the artist

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Russian reality, its "poetic truth", as Ilya Repin wrote in a letter to Polenov, captivated this great painter so powerfully that today we can study Russian history from his paintings.

The start of the journey

The artist was born in the small Ukrainian town of Chuguev, in 1844. The family lived in poverty and hardship. Repin showed his extraordinary gift in childhood, when he made toy horses from wax and paper. Displayed on the windowsill, these creations attracted a crowd of admiring fans. Little Ilya took up painting after a relative gave the boy a box of watercolors for Christmas.

At the local school of military topographers, where Repin studied from the age of thirteen, he enthusiastically draws portraits of his classmates and teachers. Two years later, the school was closed, and Ilya Repin became an apprentice to the Chuguev icon painter. The brilliant talent of the young man is recognized far beyond the city limits. Then Repin decided to go to St. Petersburg and enter the Academy of Arts. Having saved money, the young man sets off.

BPetersburg

In the autumn of 1863, a young man became a student at the drawing school of the Society for the Encouragement of Artists. In 1864, when Repin was 20 years old, the novice painter was among the volunteers of the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts. His unique abilities and diligence helped him become one of the most successful students of the Academy, and given that he was forced to earn a living in addition to studying, we will see an unusually persistent and talented person in front of us.

Brilliant debut

Repin's graduation work was a painting on the Gospel story: "The Resurrection of the Daughter of Jairus." In the center of the image is anxiety and tension, thickened in a gloomy room. While working on the canvas, Repin recalled the tragic events in his own family, when his beloved sister Ustya died. What grief and hopelessness reigned then in the house! In the picture, Christ approached the deceased, took her by the hand. Candles burn brightly at her head, this brightened spot becomes the semantic center of the picture. Other inhabitants of the house are immersed in darkness, at the end of a night full of pain and grief. Another moment - and there will be a miracle of resurrection. This canvas of the young artist is marked by the greatest spiritual intensity (see photo).

"They didn't expect" - another painting full of psychologism and drama. Repin will write it much later, in seventeen years. The path to it lies through a deep understanding of reality, which unusually excites the artist's heart and, in his words, "begs to be painted on the canvas" by itself.

Passion for truth

The sensitive heart of Ilya Efimovich could not but respond to the contrasts that are usually called social. While traveling along the Volga, the “masters of truth” were deeply struck by the disharmony between the sight of an idle, contented crowd of onlookers walking around and exhausted barge haulers pulling a huge barge along the river. Thus was born the sensational painting "Barge Haulers on the Volga". The master focuses on the facial expressions of these people who will not endure, anger and rebellion lurking in their eyes.

It is not surprising that Repin became one of the leading members of the Association of Traveling Art Exhibitions, in the bosom of which the canvas "They Did Not Wait" was created. Repin's painting bears the features of democracy that the Wanderers defended.

The revolutionary moods that roamed in Repin's contemporary society disturbed and interested the artist. A number of his paintings are dedicated to the Russian revolutionary movement. The paintings “On the Dirty Road”, “The Arrest of the Propaganda”, “Refusal of Confession” present us with images of rebels who truly believe in their idea, but did not find a wide response from the people. Such is the canvas "They did not wait." Repin's painting, which is based on the return of a revolutionary after a long exile or imprisonment home, is considered one of the most famous. The artist began to paint it in 1884 and finished four years later. At first, Repin conceived the exile as a sacrificial and courageous person, but, true to the truth, portrayed him without embellishment.

Repin's painting "They didn't expect". Description

On canvasbefore us there is a sharp and dramatic scene from life: the prisoner hesitantly and nervously enters the room where his relatives are. The author focuses on the experience that each character experiences at this moment. The stranger, indeed, was not expected. Repin's painting unusually expressively conveys the spiritual movements of the characters in the faces, gestures, and expression of the eyes. The action arises behind the door that opened a moment ago, and continues in front of us. In the background, we see the frightened face of either a servant or a host, a maid stands in the doorway, her posture and eyes express wariness. Towards the stranger, an elderly woman, probably his mother, got up from her chair. We almost physically feel how eagerly she peers at her son, how her hand trembles. At the table, crouched against the tablecloth, a little girl looks at the guest with frightened eyes - the prisoner's daughter, who, perhaps, has never seen him. To the right of her is the enthusiastic face of a schoolboy son, he knows his father, perhaps from his mother's stories, or his image lived in the boy's childhood memory. From the piano, a young woman, his wife, turns to a thin man in worn boots and a shabby coat. Her eyes sparkle with surprise and joy. Each character has its own story to read, and this whole scene is the beginning of a new story, which will have its own worries, sorrows, and jubilations. And we understand that that fear and anxiety, the seal of suffering and deprivation, which are imprinted in the face of the head of the family who returned home, will all calm down and smooth out in the gentle rays of love of loved ones. How brilliantly the artist captured this feature,when relatives live with the thought of the return of a dear person, although at this particular moment they were not waiting for him! Repin's painting in this sense is a masterpiece of psychologism.