Russian reality, its “poetic truth,” as Ilya Repin wrote in a letter to Polenov, captivated this great painter so authoritatively that today we can study Russian history from his paintings.
The beginning of the way
The artist was born in the small Ukrainian city of Chuguev, in 1844. The family lived poorly and hard. Repin showed his unusual gift in childhood when he made toy horses from wax and paper. Exposed on the windowsill, these creations gathered a crowd of admiring fans. Little Ilya took up painting after a relative gave the boy a box of watercolor paints for Christmas.
At the local school of military topographers, where Repin studied at the age of thirteen, he enthusiastically paints portraits of his classmates and teachers. Two years later, the school is closed, and Ilya Repin goes to school for the Chuguev icon painter. The brilliant talent of the young man is recognized far beyond the city. Then Repin had a decision to go to Petersburg and enter the Academy of Arts. Having saved money, the young man goes on a journey.
In Petersburg
In the fall of 1863, the young man became a student in the drawing school of the Society for the Promotion of Artists. In 1864, when Repin was 20 years old, the aspiring painter was among the volunteers of the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts. His unique abilities and diligence helped him become one of the Academy's most successful students, and given that he had to earn a living apart from his studies, we will see an unusually persistent and talented person.
Brilliant debut
Repin's thesis was a picture on the Gospel story: "The Resurrection of Jairus' Daughter." At 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 sorrow and hopelessness reigned then in the house! In the picture, Christ went to the deceased, took her hand. Candles burn brightly at its head; this brightened spot becomes the semantic center of the picture. Other inhabitants of the house are plunged into darkness, at the end of the night full of pain and grief. Another moment - and a miracle of resurrection will happen. The greatest emotional intensity marked this painting by a young artist (see photo).
“They Didn’t Wait” is another pictorial work full of psychologism and drama. His Repin will write much later, after seventeen years. The path to it lies through a deep understanding of reality, which unusually excites the artist’s heart and, in his words, “asks for the canvas” itself.
Passion for truth
The sensitive heart of Ilya Efimovich could not help but respond to the contrasts, which are usually called social. During a trip along the Volga, the “masters of truth” were deeply struck by the disharmony between the sight of an idle contented crowd of walking onlookers and tormented barge haulers pulling a huge barge along the river. Thus was born the sensational canvas "Barge Haulers on the Volga". The master focuses on the facial expressions of these people who will not tolerate anger and rebellion in their eyes.
It is not surprising that Repin became one of the leading participants in the Association of Traveling Art Exhibitions, in the bosom of which the painting “They Didn’t Wait” was created. Repin's painting bears the features of democracy that the Wanderers defended.
The revolutionary moods that roamed in modern Repin society, disturbed and interested the artist. A number of his paintings are dedicated to the Russian revolutionary movement. The paintings “On a Dirty Road”, “The Arrest of a Propaganda”, “Refusal of Confession” present us with images of rebels who sincerely believe in their idea, but who have not found a wide response from the people. Such is the canvas "Do not wait." Repin's painting, the plot of which is based on the return of the 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 it four years later. At first, Repin conceived the exiled as a sacrificial and courageous man, but, true to the truth, portrayed him without embellishment.
Repin's painting “Didn't Wait.” Description
On the canvas in front of us there is an acute and dramatic scene from life: the prisoner hesitantly and nervously enters the room where his relatives are. The author focuses on the experience that every character experiences at that moment. The alien, indeed, did not wait. Repin's painting expresses unusually expressively in the faces, gestures, and expression of the eyes the spiritual movements of the heroes. The action arises behind a door that swung open a moment ago and continues in front of us. In the background we see a frightened face of either the servants or the coilers, the maid is standing in the doorway, her posture and eyes express wariness. An elderly woman, probably his mother, got up from the chair to meet the stranger. We almost physically feel how eagerly she peers at her son, how her hand trembles. At the table, bending down to the tablecloth, with a frightened eye, a little girl looks at the guest - the daughter of a prisoner, who, perhaps, has never seen him. To her right is the enthusiastic face of the little schoolgirl’s son, he knows his father, maybe according to his mother’s stories, or his image lived in the childhood memory of the boy. From the piano, a young woman, a spouse, turns to a thin man in trampled boots and a battered coat. Her eyes sparkle with amazement and joy. Each character reads his own story, and this whole scene is the beginning of a new story, in which there will be his emotions, sorrows, glee. And we understand that the 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 tender rays of love of loved ones. How ingeniously the artist caught this feature, when relatives live with the thought of the return of a dear person, although they did not wait for him at this particular moment! Repin's painting in this sense is a masterpiece of psychologism.