page_title: Ilya Repin
section_title: 1900–1915
hierarchical_section_title: Ilya Repin / Biography / Career / 1900–1915
context_page_description: Ilya Yefimovich Repin was a Russian realist painter. He was the most renowned Russian artist of the 19th century, when his position in the world of art was comparable to that of Leo Tolstoy in literature. He played a major role in bringing Russian art into the mainstream of European culture. His major works include Barge Haulers on the Volga, Religious Procession in Kursk Province and Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks.
  Repin was born in Chuguyev, in Kharkov Governorate, Russian Empire into a family of "military settlers". His father traded horses and his grandmother ran an inn. He entered military school to study surveying. Soon after the surveying course was cancelled, his father helped Repin to become an apprentice with Ivan Bunakov, a local icon painter, where he restored old icons and painted portraits of local notables through commissions. In 1863 he went to St. Petersburg Art Academy to study painting but had to enter Ivan Kramskoi preparatory school first. He met fellow artist Ivan Kramskoi and the critic Vladimir Stasov during the 1860s, and his wife, Vera Shevtsova in 1872.
context_section_description: In 1900 he took his common-law wife Natalia Nordman to the World Exhibition in Paris, where he served as a painting judge. He visited Munich, the Tyrol, and Prague, and painted Natalia Nordman in a Tyrolese Hat and In the Sunlight: Portrait of Nadezhda Repina. In 1901 he was awarded the Legion of Honor. His painting Get Thee Behind Me, Satan! was shown at the 29th Itinerants' Society Exhibition. In 1902–1903 his works included the paintings Ceremonial Meeting of the State Council and What a Freedom!, over forty portrait studies, and portraits of Sergei Witte and Vyacheslav von Plehve. Ceremonial Meeting of the State Council was the most demanding work commissioned by Repin, requiring numerous studies of the 100 councilors depicted, and the help of two of Repin's pupils.
  In 1904 he gave a speech at a memorial gathering for the artist Vasily Vereshchagin. He painted a portrait of the writer Leonid Andreyev and his work The Death of the Cossack Squadron Commander Zinovyev. He made sketches depicting government troops opening fire on a peaceful demonstration on 9 December 1905. During 1905 Repin participated in many protests
  against bloodshed and Tsarist repressions, and tried to convey his impressions of these emotionally and politically charged events in his paintings.
  He also did sketches for portraits of Maxim Gorky and Vladimir Stasov and two portraits of Natalia Nordman. In 1907 he resigned from the Academy of Arts, visited Chuguyev and the Crimea, and wrote reminiscences of Vladimir Stasov. In 1908 he publicly denounced capital punishment in Russia. He illustrated Leonid Andreyev's story The Seven Who Were Hanged, and his painting The Cossacks from the Black Sea Coast was exhibited at the Itinerants' Society Exhibition. In 1909 he painted Gogol Burning the Manuscript of the Second Part of Dead Souls, and in 1910, portraits of Pyotr Stolypin, and the children's writer and poet Korney Chukovsky.
  In 1911 he traveled with Nordman to the World Exhibition in Italy, where his painting 17 October 1905 and his portraits were displayed in their own separate room. He wrote his reminiscences of Leo Tolstoy, gave a speech on artistic education, and painted Alexander Pushkin at the Lyceum Speech-Day, 8 January 1815. In 1912 he produced paintings related to the centenary of Napoleon's invasion of Russia. In 1913 he worked on restoring his painting Ivan the Terrible and His Son. In 1914 Natalia Nordman died in Locarno, and Repin attended her funeral there, afterwards going to Italy, before returning home to the Penates.
caption: Demonstration on October 17, 1905 
  (1906–1911)
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