Ilya Efimovich Repin

Yuri Repin, the artist's son
Private collection, Finland
Private collection, United Kingdom

Stockholm, Liljewalch's Konsthall, 1919
New York, The Kingor Galleries, The Ilya Repin Exhibition, 1921, No.3 titled Black Sea Pirate Type (I)

C.Brinton, The Ilya Repin Exhibition: Introduction and Catalogue of the Paintings, New York, 1921, listed and illustrated in black and white

Structural Condition The canvas is unlined and the turnover and tacking edges have been strengthened with a thin strip lining onto a new wooden, keyed stretcher. There is one small patch on the reverse of the canvas, in the upper left as viewed from the reverse. The structural condition is sound and secure and the canvas is providing an even support. The lower horizontal turnover edge would appear to have been extended and the original tacking holes and stretcher-bar lines are just visible. Paint surface The paint surface has a rather uneven varnish layer and revarnishing with a more even surface coating would be beneficial. Inspection under ultra-violet light shows very small retouchings, the most significant of which are: 1) along the lower horizontal turnover and tacking edges, where there are also tiny flecks of paint loss, 2) a very thin diagonal line on the man's belt which is approximately 3 cm in length, 3) a small area in the upper right of the background which measures approximately 2.5 x 1 cm and has only been partially retouched, and other very small spots. Summary The painting would therefore appear to be in very good condition and would benefit from surface cleaning and revarnishing.
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This study of a pugnacious wounded Cossack, painted in Repin's later and freer expressionistic manner was intended as a study for his large canvas Cossacks from the Black Sea Coast (fig. 1, private collection, Stockholm), shown at the Itinerant exhibition of 1908. After its poor reception there (Repin claimed that critics misunderstood his desire to experiment technically) he reworked the canvas extensively between 1909-1919 but retained the series of highly individualised faces that comprised the ship's crew. In the completed painting this study was not fully integrated and we see only the Cossack's bandaged head and part of his shoulder, which appear bottom left in the boat. The work offered here is, nevertheless, typical of Repin's life-long practise of producing large character studies in this manner, which might be regarded and displayed as portraits in their own right. The theme of the artist's Cossack ancestors had featured prominently in his oeuvre, most famously in his masterpiece of 1880-1891, Zaporozhye Cossacks Writing a Mocking Letter to the Turkish Sultan (State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg). Late in his life, from around the turn of the century, Repin returned to these themes, some inspired by the works of Gogol, that joyously celebrated the robust virility and romantically adventurous nature of the Cossacks.  Indeed virtually his last major painting, Gopak. Dance of the Zaporozhye Cossacks (1927, Private Collection), was an homage to Musorgsky which drew again on the theme. This study of a strong, individualistic, insouciant and perhaps condescendingly proud personality shows Repin's gifts as a deft and incisive portraitist undiminished in the latter stages of his exceptional career.

[1] See 'Late fixations: literary and Cossack themes' in David Jackson, The Russian Vision: the Art of Ilya Repin, BAI, Schoten, 2006, pp. 262-267.

We are grateful to David Jackson, Professor of Russian and Scandinavian Art Histories, University of Leeds, for providing this note.