ILYA REPIN’S FINAL HOPAK
Vasily Polenov. Portrait of the Artist Ilya Repin, 1879 / wikipedia.org
On the easel stood a canvas. On the canvas — a bright room with a round table draped in a fringed tablecloth. Worn notebooks, sheet music, women’s heads. A weary, pale-faced man, a shocked woman at the piano, a hunched mother, and two children doing their lessons. The boy was joyful, and the girl was confused (unable to recognize her father). Behind them, a bashful cook. Outside, the timid green leaves of an April debut. On the wall is a portrait of the Kobzar.
The artist stepped back, staring intently at «They Did Not Expect Him», and firmly began sketching the prisoner’s face. He would later repaint it three times, the last time after the painting had already been sold and was hanging on a wall.
Ilya Repin (July 24, 1844 – September 29, 1930) is a remarkable artist from a Cossack lineage. He is renowned for his deep, emotionally charged paintings depicting historical events and people’s lives. A famous portraitist, he left behind numerous depictions of the prominent figures of his time.
PAINTING BEGINS WITH HORSES
T
his method was one Repin practiced throughout his life. Perhaps it stemmed from an inner perfectionism, or maybe from his vibrant Ukrainian blood? Repin was a native of Kharkiv, born near Chuhuiv. His father served as a private in the Chuhuiv Uhlan Regiment for nearly three decades, was a teetotaler, and bred horses.
His mother was literate, knew Zhukovsky’s poems by heart, and had no tolerance for smoking or smoking. His grandmother ran an inn. Young Ilya was curious by nature and admired horses: he would cut out animals from paper and paste them on the windows. Recognizing his talent, his family sent him to a topographers’ corps and later to an icon painting workshop.
Over time, an epidemic struck, horses were afflicted with a plague, his grandmother passed away, and the family fell into bankruptcy. To survive, his mother began sewing fur coats to order, and young Ilya took to painting rural churches. He was exceptionally skilled at depicting the faces of saints. While others drew ears of wheat and grapes, the teenager captured sorrow and humility. He dreamed of attending the Academy of Arts.
At nineteen, he pocketed his hard-earned one hundred rubles and set off for St. Petersburg, believing that with such a sum, he could «grab God by the beard». The reality was different. The young man knocked on the doors of the capital’s workshops and painted roofs, carriages, and buckets, but within a year, he became a student and quickly gained recognition.
His portraits were distinguished by extraordinary emotional depth. They contained so much sadness, despair, and hope that one could almost attach a bucket to the canvas and collect these emotions like birch sap. Ilya earned a silver medal, followed by gold. He won gold for the biblical «Resurrection of Jairus’s Daughter».
VERA, ILYA, AND LIFE’S TWISTS AND TURNS
Alongside painting, love walked hand in hand. In February, when the Neva was bristling with ice and snow covered everything like a shroud, Ilya married Vera Shevtsova and set off for Europe. Italy quickly bored him, but the family stayed in Paris for three winters and two summers.
Their daughter Verochka was born there, and he painted Parisian Café and Sadko in the Underwater Kingdom. The underwater adventurer was mocked, and the canvas was nicknamed an aquarium. Parisian Café also faced criticism. Ivan Kramskoi even emphasized that a «khokhol», a purebred Ukrainian, shouldn’t be painting Parisian courtesans. For that, one should be born and live in Paris. «You have a different task: to paint authentic Ukrainian characters!»
Three years later, the family arrived in Chuhuiv, where the artist painted several peasants: one with an evil eye, another timid, and a third with rank — a proto-priest. They then headed to Moscow, but the family idyll began to crack. His wife, Vera, bore children one after another, while the artist couldn’t imagine himself outside his studio.
He mixed paints instinctively, without looking at what or how much he was using. He painted unthinkingly. He created Barge Haulers on the Volga, a Religious Procession in Kursk Province, and a slew of portraits, including one of his colleague Murashko.
Repin lived life to the fullest, enjoying loud debates and late-night feasts, while Vera always felt tired and sleep-deprived. She couldn’t keep up conversations and was irritated by guests and by her husband’s numerous affairs. And how could he resist when young ladies eagerly shed their silk and velvet skirts? The couple, ignoring the children, often quarreled loudly and broke dishes because Ilya wanted to live his own life, while Vera demanded that they live as a family. Eventually, they divorced. The two older children stayed with their father, while the younger ones went with their mother.
HOW THE ZAPOROZHIAN COSSACKS WROTE THEIR LETTER
The portraitist was forty-four years old. Short in stature and wearing a black overcoat, he seemed simple at first glance. He rarely used a carriage or cab, mostly walking or taking the tram, and even then, only at dawn, since a morning ticket cost five kopecks, while a daytime one was ten. But he had a fiery temperament!
In his letters, he would use three exclamation marks, and if provoked, he might hurl a heavy inkwell or grab a hot samovar. He worked tirelessly, reworking each painting ten to twelve times, yet stubbornly referred to himself as a «hardworking mediocrity». Behind his back, he was known as the Cunning Khokhol.
After his divorce, he became obsessed with the Zaporozhians (that «damned people»). He noted that their noise and clamor made his head spin. Every evening, he read to his daughters in Little Russian about the gray-haired ataman Sirko, the Cossack Holota, Taras Bulba, Ostap, Andriy, and the blacksmith Vakula. He sculpted their figures out of gray clay, and his son Yuri wore a chub (Cossack topknot).
To accurately capture the mood and era, he tirelessly gathered materials, sketching hundreds of faces. His right hand ached uncontrollably, so he wrapped it in a warm woolen bandage, but he didn’t slow down. He was genuinely afraid of dying before completing the painting.
With the money he earned from «The Zaporozhians Write a Letter», he bought an estate in Vitebsk Province but longed for Chuhuiv. «I so want to see the white cottages, the cherry orchards bathed in sunlight, the shutters, roses of all colors, and hear the ringing voices of sun-kissed girls and the deep voices of handsome young men…» And so, following the call of his heart (he created around 180 works on Ukrainian themes), he painted maidservants, Haidamakas, and bandurists. He depicted squat cottages with tiny windows, fairs, religious processions, and evening gatherings.
WHERE ARE THE PENATES
With his second wife, Natalia Nordman, Repin settled in the summer village of Kuokkala, 40 kilometers from St. Petersburg, on the shores of the Gulf of Finland. His chosen partner was extraordinary in every way. At 21, she secretly fled to America, where she milked cows, harvested corn, gutted geese, cooked meals, and churned butter. She knew six languages, read foreign magazines, and could translate them instantly. She was a talented photographer, writer, sculptor, and actress.
She was a stark contrast to the quiet and reserved Vera, which is why Ilya Yefimovich fell in love with her. Friends criticized his decision, highlighting the woman’s lack of attractiveness and her whole figure (beside her, the groom looked like a boy). They pointed out her strange skin color, resembling an underbaked loaf, her sunken eyes, and her controversial nature.
In private conversations, they referred to her as a «girl» or a «clowness». but this did nothing to diminish Repin’s happiness. The «newlyweds» eagerly renovated the house (they designed towers and a glass roof) and named it the Penates.
LOVE WITH A TANG OF SORREL
Natalia determinedly took charge of the estate and became seriously committed to vegetarianism. She prepared pickled soups, onion broths, and cutlets made from potato peels. Meat, eggs, fish, honey, or milk were strictly off-limits. Ilya Yefimovich devoured the «hay» with gusto and felt young and healthy.
The estate had two studios. He would lead visitors into one while he retreated to the other for solitude. Every Wednesday around 1:00 PM, he would wash his brushes, change into a light gray suit, and wait for guests. «Lunch in the hayloft» was served at 6:00 PM. Guests were greeted by a rotating table with drawers for dirty dishes. On it were kissel (well-cooked sorrel with wood sorrel), jams, soups, and pickled chanterelles. For dessert — plantain cookies.
Guests often left the table half-hungry, as overeating was considered very harmful. They would engage in choral singing, usually performing old Ukrainian songs or «Reve ta stone Dnipro shyrokyi», and stage living pictures. Quick costume changes, hopping dances, and Chukhon polkas were all part of the fun.
In the summer of 1914, Natalia passed away, and the estate was taken over by his eldest daughter, Vera, who had a notoriously tricky temperament. The artist slowly aged and fell ill but continued to paint, strapping his palette to his waist. He harbored a solid aversion to the Bolsheviks despite being invited back by Lunacharsky himself.
As he felt his strength waning, Repin apologized to his compatriots for his lack of fluency in the language and expressed deep regret that he could not move to the «sweet and joyful Ukraine». In his final days, he lay bedridden, continuously moving his left hand in the air (his right hand had long ceased to function), trying to depict a hundred-year-old man dancing a hopak. He painted the hopak until his last breath.
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