Description of the painting by I. E

Probably, few paintings by classical artists are as popular with manufacturers of the so-called "photo-toads" as the painting "They Didn't Wait" by Ilya Repin.
Behind the abundance of humorous interpretations and plots, it is useful to recall what the original looks like and what the artist actually depicted on his canvas.

Did not expect - Ilya Efimovich Repin. 1884. Oil on canvas. 160.5x167.5

One of the most famous paintings by Repin, thanks to school anthologies and textbooks, is known to every schoolchild. The plot of the work is the return of an exiled revolutionary home after imprisonment. The picture is filled with a thick and viscous atmosphere. The depicted moment allows you to study it from all angles. Everything is here - and intense indecision, fear, admiration, joy, fear ... The crosshair of views is the key to the plot.

The central figure is the exile. His eyes are especially expressive against the background of a haggard face, they contain a question, a tense expectation. At the same time, it is obvious that the exile did not break the revolutionary, he remained true to his views.

The eyes of all those present are directed towards the protagonist: from frankly frightened to admired by children; full of discreet condemnation - the maid; curious at the cook.

The only figure in the picture, whose eyes we do not see, is interesting - this is a woman (mother?) in black. Her gaze is more likely to be guessed by her posture: tense and static.

One gets the feeling that in the next second the situation will be resolved: those present will rush to hug their suddenly returned relative, or, on the contrary, turn away from him and ask him not to disturb him anymore. The author leaves the resolution of the situation outside the scope of his work. We have a moment to make a decision...

Well, under the cut, the most witty of the huge variety of "surprises" based on the famous painting:

The painting belongs to the "Narodnaya Volya" series by Ilya REPIN, which also includes the paintings "The Arrest of a Propaganda" (188-1889, 1892, Tretyakov Gallery), "Before Confession" ("Refusal of Confession", 1879-1885, Tretyakov Gallery), "Skhodka" (1883, State Tretyakov Gallery) and others. The moment depicted in the picture shows the first reaction of family members to the return of the convict from exile.

Repin began working on the painting in the early 1880s, being impressed by the assassination of Emperor ALEXANDER II, committed on March 1 (13), 1881, as well as from the public execution of the Narodnaya Volya, which took place on April 3 (15), 1881, and on which he himself was present.

The wife of the returned man was painted from Repin's wife Vera Alekseevna, the mother - from the artist's mother-in-law Evgenia Dmitrievna SHEVTSOVA, the boy - from Sergei KOSTYCHEV, the son of neighbors in the country (in the future - a famous biochemist, professor and academician; 1877-1931), the girl - from her daughter Faith, and the maid - from the servants of the Repins. It is assumed that the face of the entering man could have been painted from Vsevolod Mikhailovich GARSHIN (1855-1888).

The interior of the apartment is decorated with reproductions that are important for assessing the political mood in the family and the symbolism of the picture. These are portraits of the democratic writers Nikolai NEKRASOV and Taras SHEVCHENKO, the image of Emperor ALEXANDER II, who was killed by the People's Will, on his deathbed, as well as an engraving from the then popular painting by Karl STEIBEN "Calvary". Analogies with the gospel story about suffering and self-sacrifice for people were very common among the revolutionary intelligentsia.

Portrait of Taras Grigoryevich SHEVCHENKO (1814-1861). 1858 Photographer DENER Andrei Ivanovich (1820-1892).
Portrait of Nikolai Alekseevich NEKRASOV (1821-1877). 1870-1877 Photographer Jacob Johann Wilhelm WEZENBERG (1839-1880).

STEIBEN Karl Karlovich (1788-1856) "On Golgotha". 1841
Canvas, oil. 193 x 168 cm.
State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

MAKOVSKY Konstantin Yegorovich (1839-1915) "Portrait of Alexander II on his deathbed". 1881
Canvas, oil. 61 x 85 cm.
State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

Among all the articles about the picture, I liked this one (given with minor changes).

Ilya Repin's painting "They Didn't Wait" is well known. A shabby man enters the room, not expected by the members of his family who are in it. This is a Narodnaya Volya member who returned from Siberian penal servitude. The sufferer's mother, wife and two children express their emotions, making up a pictorial group. Women in black - someone died while the poor fellow was in prison (his father?).

Wait! Why didn't they wait? Have they forgotten when the poor fellow's sentence ends? Well, all right, he was released somehow suddenly, but why didn’t he send a telegram to his family then? How and why did the artist's return home from prison, a planned event by default, turn out to be associated with surprise? Let's try to figure it out.

To begin with, it is necessary to explain what the criminal-correctional punishments existing at that time consisted of. The courts could sentence convicts to various types of imprisonment: arrest (from 1 day to 3 months), imprisonment in a strait house (from 2 months to 2 years), imprisonment in a fortress (from 1 to 16 months), imprisonment (from 2 to 16 months), work in correctional prison companies (from 1 year to 4 years), hard labor (from 4 years to indefinite), exile to a settlement (indefinite) and exile to housing (indefinite, could be accompanied by imprisonment from 1 to 4 years) . In addition, there was also an administrative exile (up to 5 years) - a punishment imposed extrajudicially.

It is very unlikely that the character in the picture was exiled to a settlement or to live in Siberia, or was in administrative exile. The explanation here is simple: he is very badly dressed. Exiles and settlers lived in their own or hired dwellings, by their own labor and at their own expense, they freely disposed of money and could receive money transfers. The prisoners in the fortress (in fact, it was not a fortress, but a section in a prison) were also sitting in their own clothes. It is difficult to imagine that a family that rents a country house for the summer, has servants, plays the piano, etc., would not send money to the repressed, allowing him to dress more decently.

Consequently, the character of the picture was imprisoned. The prisoners were dressed in standard prison clothes, and upon release they were given what they were arrested in (applies only to the prison in the city of arrest, clothes were not sent to other cities), clothes were bought for them at their expense, and if the released person did not have any money, no clothes - the Committee for Prisons bought them clothes for donated amounts. One must think that it was the used clothes of ordinary citizens, bought from a junk dealer - exactly what the hero of the picture is wearing.

Why, then, did a more or less wealthy family not send money to the prisoner? The answer is simple: there was no stall in the prison where food was sold, the number of things that the prisoner was allowed to keep was limited (cup, comb, spoon, etc.), so the money could not be spent. They would simply lie uselessly in the custody of the head of the prison. Of course, money was sent to the prisoners for release so that they could get home on them - but for some reason our character was released suddenly.

So, the hero of the picture was either sitting in a correctional prison not in his province - there were fewer correctional prisons than provincial ones, or he was in hard labor in Siberia. What is more plausible - we will figure it out further.

How did it happen that the prisoner was released suddenly? Only one answer is possible: pardon. Parole did not exist until 1909, and cases in the appellate and cassation instances were conducted with the participation of lawyers, and the decision was announced in their presence (the decision of the appellate instance is still binding on the convict himself). And only the Highest pardon (and it was sometimes given even without a petition from the convict) could go directly to the administration of the place of detention without informing the lawyers and the prisoner about it.

Why didn't the liberated send a telegram to his family? We see that the action of the picture takes place in a country house. There were still very few post offices outside the county towns in that era. Delivery of letters and telegrams to your home (even in large cities) was not included in the basic rate of postal services, letters (outside the capitals) were not delivered to your home at all (unless the recipient entered into a special agreement), and a separate fee was charged for the delivery of telegrams by courier - about 10 kopecks per verst (that is, 1 modern dollar per km). If we assume that the country house is located 50 km from the county town, then the telegram would cost 5-6 rubles, which the prisoner, judging by his tattered appearance, simply did not have. And so the unexpected appearance was formed.

But if he has no money, how did he get from Siberia? The treasury did not reimburse the travel expenses of prisoners released from prison. If you had money and the head of the prison thought you were quiet enough, you could go home at your own expense. If not, you were sent home by train for free, that is, with the same escort team that brought new prisoners to the prison. On foot (there was no railway in Siberia yet), with an overnight stay in transit huts, and already from the Urals in a prison car, but not under escort, but together with the escort.

If our poor guy came from Siberia himself, he spent 50-70 rubles on it anyway. Then it would have been better for him to send an expensive telegram to his family, wait on the spot until the money was sent to him by telegraph (this would take 3-4 days), and then go home in great comfort, and not in rags. Thus, the hero of the picture either traveled from Siberia with a stage only because no one lent him 5 rubles for a telegram (less likely), or he was in the correctional department of a prison in European Russia, and after his release it was easier for him to get home as soon as possible than expecting money to be sent (more likely).

Now let's move on to the most interesting. What did he do? To begin with, I must say that the picture does not give any hints of this. Maybe it's a middle manager jailed for embezzlement. The viewer had to guess for himself. The spectator of the 1880s unanimously guessed - this is a "politician", that is, for that era - a Narodnaya Volya.

If the hero of the picture was imprisoned for politics, in any case he was not a serious conspirator. People who really participated in groups that committed terrorist attacks and were going to kill the king did not receive pardons in 1883 (the year the picture was created). All of them served either until the amnesty of 1896 (the coronation of NICHOLAS II) or the amnesty of 1906 (the opening of the State Duma), and some were not released at all. If the state let someone go in 1883 (and at that moment tsarism was still very much afraid of the Narodnaya Volya), it was only those who accidentally fell under the hand, a small fry - caught in relatively harmless political conversations or with illegal literature.

What exactly had to be done in order to get into the corrective prisoner companies? The most suitable article of the Code of Punishments, 318th - “accomplices of illegal societies who were not among their founders, bosses and main leaders” - provided for a very wide range of punishments, from 8 months in prison to 8 years in hard labor. It was under this article that a lot of unfortunate people fell, who accidentally and once wandered into a meeting, which the investigators then considered a Narodnaya Volya circle. The harshness of court decisions varied, following the political situation. At the dawn of the Narodnaya Volya movement, for being present at the reading of some kind of revolutionary declaration, one could get 4 years of prison companies. After the king was killed, it began to seem like trifles, and the most harmless of such convicts could begin to mitigate punishment, forgiving the unserved part of the sentence. It was impossible to get into the correctional department for "literature" - distributors received from 6 to 8 years of hard labor, writers - from 8 to 16 months of the fortress, readers - from 7 days to 3 months of arrest.

So, the picture allows a wide range of interpretations. But, in any case, it does not depict an inveterate revolutionary and a courageous fighter. Rather, before us is a person who accidentally or to a small extent touched the people's will movement, sentenced for this to a medium-term (1-4 years) imprisonment and pardoned by the tsar before the expiration of the term. Moreover, he was pardoned not from the fact that the king is kind, but from the fact that it became clear that he was not really to blame.

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 beginning of the way

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 on his journey.

In Petersburg

In the autumn of 1863, the 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. His unique abilities and diligence helped him become one of the most successful students of the Academy, and given that he was forced, in addition to studying, to also earn a living, we we will see before us an unusually persistent and talented person.

Brilliant debut

Repin's diploma work was a painting on the Gospel story: "The Resurrection of the Daughter of Jairus." In the center of the image - 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 wait” is 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 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 walking onlookers 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 lurk 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 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 devoutly 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 very beginnings of painting 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 Wait". Description

A sharp and dramatic scene from life appears on the canvas before us: 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 in the faces, gestures, spiritual movements of the characters. 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, bending down to the tablecloth, a little girl looks with frightened eyes at the guest - 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. A young woman, a wife, turns from the piano 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.

Plot

Many of Ilya Repin's paintings at his retrospective exhibition, which opened on March 16, 2019 at the Tretyakov Gallery, are met like old acquaintances. Therefore, it probably makes no sense to retell the plot of the artist’s most famous canvas from his prison cycle, which included “On a dirty road under escort”, “The arrest of a propagandist” and “Refusal of confession”. It is difficult to find a person who would not write essays on “They Did Not Wait” at school.

"They didn't wait", 1884−1888 (wikimedia.org)

I would only like to pay attention to some details of the picture, because they are not accidental. For example, the portraits hanging on the walls confirm that the person entering the room is a Narodnaya Volya, and his family shares his beliefs. On two of them are symbols of freethinking of that time: Taras Shevchenko and Nikolai Nekrasov. On other reproductions, no less telling images of Alexander II on his deathbed, killed by Narodnaya Volya, and “Christ on Golgotha”. Art historians call this “picture in picture” technique misanabim (from the French mise en abyme - “place a heraldic element in the center of the coat of arms”), that is, the embedding of one piece of art into another.

Many viewers and critics drew a parallel between the picture and the biblical story of the prodigal son. One of the main characters - the mother of the returnee - was depicted by the artist with her back, but the fact that we do not see her face makes the drama taking place before our eyes even more expressive.

“We didn’t wait”, fragment. (wikimedia.org)

Ilya Repin attached the greatest importance to the face of the protagonist, rewrote it three times. Having finished the picture, he literally continued to work on it. Even after “They Didn’t Wait” was shown at traveling exhibitions and took its place in the collection of Pavel Tretyakov, the artist, without warning the patron, completely remade the image of his returned son in his absence. Tretyakov was furious and returned the painting to Repin for revision. Today we already know it in this form.

Context

On the one hand, contemporaries who saw the canvas at traveling exhibitions understood perfectly well that this Narodnaya Volya had returned to his home from imprisonment, but on the other hand, even then there were fierce disputes about where exactly he was and for what crimes he went to jail. Some critics accused Repin of the fact that, in their opinion, not everything in the picture could be clearly read. But for Ilya Efimovich, most likely, it was more important to show the dramatic tension of the moment and the psychological experiences of the characters. No wonder Korney Chukovsky called Repin "... the great playwright of Russian painting." And some understatement gives the viewer the opportunity to think out and imagine what is happening in the picture, in accordance with their life circumstances and personal experience.

The idea for the painting came to the artist after the events of 1881, when Alexander II was assassinated. After that, many Narodnaya Volya members ended up in prisons or were sent into exile. Often the plot of the picture is associated with the amnesty of these prisoners in connection with the ascension to the throne of Emperor Alexander III.

The question remains: why didn’t they expect a son, a husband, a father? Why did he appear so unexpectedly? The exact date of release was always known in advance to the convict, the head of the prison, and, of course, relatives. On weekends, letters could be written to prisoners, and of course even ordinary peasants sent them if they were literate. It is possible that the hero of the picture also wrote such a message, but it is also possible that the message with this happy news will come home later than the one released from prison, or maybe it will be lost.

Another version: the hero of the picture could be unexpectedly released from the remand prison, which was located not far from his family's house. Protracted processes were typical for the 1870s, especially if there were many defendants in the case, the investigation sometimes dragged on for months and even years. The hero could simply not have time to warn the family that he was released.

Repin himself sympathized with the unreliable. Korney Chukovsky’s memories of this have been preserved: “In 1913, together with my wife and Natalya Borisovna Nordman, he helped to transport one supervised person who was threatened by prison across the Beloostrov cordon: he provided him with a horse, a village sleigh and equipped him on the road with his own hands.”

The fate of the artist

Ilya Repin, which, unfortunately, is very rare among artists, has a happy creative destiny. His talent was in demand from an early age. A boy from the provincial town of Chuguev was admitted to the Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg and graduated with two gold medals. If there had been a rating system in the 19th century, then Repin would have taken the highest places in it.

Ilya Efimovich was greedy for creativity, he was interested in both topical and historical subjects. He passionately undertook to transfer to canvas and paper everything that attracted his attention. For this, critics and friends even reproached him for being omnivorous. And the artist himself could not decide and understand what his purpose was. Korney Chukovsky, who lived near Repin for many years and helped him edit the book Far and Close, recalls that he said: “... I can’t engage in direct creativity (that is, “art for art’s sake.” - K. Ch.) . To make carpets that caress the eye, weave lace, engage in fashion - in a word, in every way interfere with God's gift with scrambled eggs, adapting to the new trends of the times. No, I am a man of the 60s, a backward man, the ideals of Gogol, Belinsky, Turgenev, Tolstoy and other idealists have not yet died for me. With all my insignificant strengths, I strive to personify my ideas in truth; The surrounding life excites me too much, does not give rest, itself, asks for a canvas; reality is too outrageous to embroider patterns with a clear conscience - let's leave it to well-bred young ladies.

There was even a period in Repin's life (1893-1898) when he declared war on this ideology, as if trying to destroy the very principles that underlie all his work, which made him the author of "They Didn't Wait", "Barge Haulers", "The Godfather move", "Arrest".

“Get away from me, Satan!”, Ilya Repin, 1860. (wikioo.org)

Korney Ivanovich writes that during this period he became interested in religious painting and began to paint the painting “Get away from me, Satan!” The picture was not given to him. What can be done to make it as successful as possible? The artist Polenov advised him the right remedy:

“You must pray well before you take up the brush. It is impossible to take on a religious subject without fasting and prayer.

“And I obeyed,” Repin later said. I write and pray. I write and pray. And I keep a strict fast.

- And what?

He laughed and didn't answer. The pause lasted at least a minute. Then he sighed and said dejectedly:

- Such rubbish came out!

Sources

1. Korney Chukovsky "Repin"
2. Image for the announcement of the material on the main page and for the lead: wikipedia.org

“Repin’s painting“ They didn’t expect it ”- this expression has long become a meme. "Around the World" figured out who and what the characters, the author and the owner of the picture were not really waiting for.

Painting "We didn't expect"
Canvas, oil. 160.5 x 167.5 cm
Years of creation: 1884–1888
Now kept in the State Tretyakov Gallery

One of the main surprises went to the philanthropist Pavel Tretyakov. He bought a critically acclaimed painting by a famous artist for 7,000 rubles; visitors to the Tretyakov Gallery were eagerly awaiting its arrival from the 12th exhibition of the Wanderers. The topical plot also attracted the public: a political one, released ahead of schedule, does not have time to warn the family about the release and stuns them with its appearance. In the early 1880s, populists convicted in the 1870s were released under an amnesty.

For two years the picture hung peacefully in the Tretyakov Gallery, but in 1887 there was a scandal. When Tretyakov was absent from Moscow, Repin came to the gallery with a box of paints and quickly copied the head of the incoming person. The hero of the canvas, according to eyewitnesses, began to look younger, but the pride of a convinced revolutionary in his features was replaced by lack of will and confusion. Seeing the picture, Tretyakov was furious at Repin's arbitrariness and, in addition, decided that it was poorly corrected. He thought about dismissing the servants who looked after the gallery, who did not expect his wrath: it never occurred to them to interfere with the artist, an old friend and adviser to the owner of the gallery.

And Repin was surprised at Tretyakov's indignation, but when he sent the picture for correction the next year, he finalized it. The result was satisfactory for both. “This third exile is rather a wonderful, glorious Russian intellectual than a revolutionary,” wrote Igor Grabar, a classic of art criticism. “The picture sang,” finally summed up the contented Repin.

1. Former prisoner. The historian Igor Erokhov determined that among the populists in the early 1880s, by royal pardon, not a revolutionary, but a sympathizer could be released ahead of schedule, from those who were present at the meetings, but did not participate in the actions: serious conspirators of that period, if they were amnestied, were not before 1896. The hero could be convicted under article 318 of the Code of Punishments for membership in a forbidden circle (punished by imprisonment in a fortress, exile or hard labor). Repin's model was a friend, the writer Vsevolod Garshin. Suffering from depression, Garshin committed suicide in the year the painting was completed, in 1888.

2. Armenian. The hero’s peasant clothing, writes Erokhov, means that the man was serving his sentence in correctional convict companies far from home: the clothes in which they were taken were not transported for those sent along the stage, and upon release they were given rags bought with donations from the Society for Prison Guardians.

3. Old woman. The mother of the hero, whom Repin wrote from his mother-in-law, Evgenia Shevtsova. “The one who enters,” writes art historian Tatyana Yudenkova, “sees only what the viewer does not see: the mother’s eyes.”

4. Lady. The hero's wife. Repin wrote it from his wife, Vera, and from the niece of the critic Stasov, Varvara. Both mother and wife are in mourning - a sign that someone in the family died recently, within a year.

5. Maid. The girl reluctantly lets a poorly dressed man into the room, not recognizing him as the head of the family: apparently, she was hired after his arrest.

6. Boy. The hero's son, a boy in a schoolboy's uniform, recognized his father as he entered and was delighted. Repin painted a boy from Serezha Kostychev, the son of neighbors in the country, the future academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, who studied plant respiration.

7. Girl. The hero's daughter, on the other hand, is frightened: she was probably too young when her father was arrested to remember him. Repin was posed by his eldest daughter Vera.

8. Furniture.“The situation is meager in a dacha,” noted art critic Lazar Rosenthal. The artist painted the interior from the furnishings of the house in Martyshkino, which the Repins rented as a dacha, like many St. Petersburg families who settled for the summer outside the city near the Gulf of Finland.

9. Photography. On it is Alexander II, who was killed in 1881 by Grinevitsky, in a coffin. Photography is a sign of the times, indicating the politicization of the plot of the picture. The assassination of the tsar was a frontier for the populist movement: contrary to the hopes of the revolutionaries, the removal of the monarch did not cause progressive changes in the Russian Empire. The 1880s became a time of reflection, when many became disillusioned with terror as a method and with society's readiness for transformation.

10. Portraits of Nikolai Nekrasov And Taras Shevchenko, writers and publicists, whom the populists considered ideological inspirers - a sign that the family members of the exiled share his convictions.

11. "On Golgotha" by Karl Steiben- a very popular reproduction and at the same time a hint of the suffering that the hero had to endure, and a kind of resurrection for his family after several years of imprisonment.

Artist
Ilya Repin

1844 - Born in the family of a military settler in the Kharkov province in Ukraine.

1864–1871 - Studied at the Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg.

1870–1873 - He painted the picture "Barge Haulers on the Volga".

1872 - He married Vera Shevtsova, the daughter of an architect. The marriage produced three daughters and a son.

1874 - Began exhibiting with the Association of Traveling Art Exhibitions.

1876 - Wrote “Under escort. On a dirty road”, the first painting on a revolutionary historical theme.

1880–1889, 1892 - Worked on the second, most famous version of the painting "The Arrest of the Propaganda".

1887 - He divorced his wife.

1899 - I bought a manor, which I called "Penates", and moved in with Natalia Nordman - a suffragist, writer (pseudonym - Severova).
1907–1911 - Worked on the painting "Demonstration on October 17, 1905".

1930 - He died in "Penates" (then the estate was on the territory of Finland, now - in Russia).