Tanais Gallery
Ilya Repin. Barge Haulers on the Volga.
1870-1873. Oil on canvas. The State Russian Museum,
St. Petersburg, Russia.
Ilya Repin was equally skilled in portraiture and in genre and historical painting.
His art represents the acme of Russian critical realism. Repin’s characters are living people of his day and the painter’s attitude towards them is that of insatiable interest. Like Perov, Repin not only depicts life, he pronounces judgement on it. Yet, distinct from Perov’s literary narrativeness, Repin tends to give a monumental-epic revelation to his themes.
“Barge Haulers on the Volga” (1870-1873) was the first considerable work painted by Repin after graduation the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts. It immediately won recognition.
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Nikolay Nekrasov.
Thoughts at a Vestibule
1858.
…O my homeland!
Tell me now of some abode-
I have surely never seen it-
Where your sower and your guardian,
The meek Russian peasant, does not moan?
……………………….
Go out to the Volga: hear whose moan
Rises over Russia's greatest river?
In our land, this moan is called a song-
It's the boatmen straining in their traces! . .
Volga! Volga! In the spring your torrents
Cannot flood the fields as much
As our people's awful pain
Floods our land-
Where you are there's moaning-O, my people!
What can all this endless moaning mean?
Will you ever waken, filled with strength,
Or, obeying fate's command,
Have you done all that you can,
Fashioning a song so like a moan,
While your soul remains forever mired in sleep?..
A. Wachtel, I. Kutik and M. Denner
www.russianpoetry.net
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