The Russian Academy Of Arts

On July 16, 2011 the descendants of the eminent Russian painter Ilya Repin (1844-1930) visited the Russian Academy of Arts, 21 Prechistenka street, viewed an exposition in Tsereteli Art Gallery and exhibition in honor of the 110th anniversary of the Estate “Penaty” where Ilya Repin had worked and lived for almost 30 years until his death with his second wife Natalya Nordman.

It is the first visit to Russia of eighteen relatives in the line of the younger Ilya Repin’s daughter - Tatyana I. Repina (married name Yazeva). Her only daughter – Repin’s granddaughter Tatyana Nickolaevna (married name Diakonova) – had five children whose heirs are now members of the large Diakonov-Repin family. All of them live in France.

The purpose of their visit to Russia is to show the heritage of their outstanding ancestor to the young generation of the family. Besides Moscow, they will visit the town of Chuguevo (Ukraine) - Ilya Repin’s birthplace; Zdravnevo Estate (Vitebsk Province, Belarus), where the painter lived with his first wife Vera – great-great grandmother of the Frenchmen who came to Russia; and St. Petersburg where they plan to visit I. Repin St. Petersburg State Academy Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture and the Estate “Penaty”.

The eminent Russian painter Ilya Repin was born in the town of Chuguevo (near Kharkov, Ukraine) in 1844. In 1863 he studied in the painting school of the Society for the Encouragement of Artists under Ivan Kramskoy and Rudolf Zhukovsky. In 1864-1871 Repin majored in painting at the Imperial Academy of Arts under Peter Basin and Fyodor Bruni. For his program work “The resurrection of Iair’s Daughter” (The State Russian Museum) Ilya Repin was awarded the Academy’s Gold Medal and a grant for a six-year study in Italy and France.

After his return from Europe in 1877 he came to Moscow, where he became a frequent visitor in Abramtsevo – an estate located north of Moscow in the proximity of Khotkovo, that was a center of artistic activity in the 19th century, and one of the most active participants of Savva Mamontov’s circle. It was in those years, that he painted his canvases “Princess Sophia” and “Zaporozhtsy”, portraits of A.F. Pisemsky, M.P. Musorgsky, N.I. Pirogov, A. G. Rubinstein and others. Later, he almost annually visited Moscow and met more than once with Leo Tolstoy. In 1958 in Moscow in Bolotnaya square (in the 1950s – 1990s named after I. Repin) was unveiled a monument to Ilya Repin by the sculptor M.G. Manizer, architect – I.E. Rozhin.

In 1882 Ilya Repin moved to St. Petersburg, where for 10-12 years he created many of his most famous paintings such as “Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan November 16, 1581”, “Renunciation of the Confession”, “Arrest of a Propagandist”, “Cross Procession in the Kursk Province”, portraits of Leo Tolstoy and others. For Repin St. Petersburg was his “intellectual home”. With the northern capital are connected his best achievements. Today, the former Kalinkina square is named after Repin and the house in it where the artist lived for 13 years has been marked by a memorial plaque. In I. Repin St. Petersburg State Academy Institute there are two memorial plaques – in the conference hall and the painter’s studio - commemorating Repin’s years in the Academy of Arts. In 1892 he became a Professor and in 1893 was elected an Academician of the Academy of Arts. In 1894-1907 Repin headed a workshop in the Academy’s Higher Art College.

Since the early 1890s Ilya Repin worked in his Zdravnevo estate in Vitebsk Province, where at present (since 1988) there is I. Repin Memorial Museum. In Zdravnevo he created his canvases “Belarussian”, “Bunch of Autumn Flowers”, “Hunter with a Rifle”, “Dual”, as well as other paintings and sketches.

He spent his last years (1899-1930) in the settlement of Kuokkala (until 1948 when it was renamed after its most famous inhabitant Ilya Repin) on the Karelian Isthmus (now Repino, 47 km northwest of St. Petersburg). In 1940 in the painter’s house was opened I. Repin Estate-Museum “Penaty”. It was completely destroyed during the Great Patriotic War 1941-1945 and recreated in 1962.

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