Ilya Efimovich Repin

Original canvas. There are light stretcher abrasions running horizontally and vertically across the paintings, not distracting to the eye. The paint surface is slightly dirty. There is a spot of paint loss above the sitter's hair. There are lines of vertical craquelure to the sitter's arm and cheek. UV light reveals no apparent signs of retouching, however a layer of opaque varnish prevents a conclusive examination. Held in a moulded gold painted wooden frame. Unexamined out of frame.
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It has been suggested that the sitter of the present work may be Maria Grigorevna Ge, the eldest niece of Russian artist Nikolai Nikolaevich Ge (1831-1894), and an aspiring actress who moved to Paris in 1974 with her two younger sisters Vera and Zoya. Repin was well acquainted with the family and often invited the sisters to pose for his compositions as Ukrainian peasants or Parisian coquettes. In the latter case the sketches formed part of his impressive canvas Parisian Café, completed in 1875.

The delicate costume of the sitter and the Roman style of the hair, very unusual for the fashion of the time, perhaps refer to classical antiquity, presenting the sitter as a model for a mythological scene. A similar costume is thought to have been worn by Maria for a New Year’s Eve celebration at the residence of Alexei Bogoliubov in 1876 where Repin staged Apotheosis of the Arts, a live tableau. The young actress was cast as the muse of poetry, amongst four other embodiments of the arts, music, sculpture and painting. Polenov later described the scene in a letter to his family, recounting how they were ‘all dressed in white tulle and gauze with laurels crowning their hair.‘

The portrait also bears close resemblance to the dozens of portrait oil sketches which Repin completed in preparation for Sadko in the Underwater Kingdom (1876), his first large-scale work on arrival in Paris. Many of these preparatory portraits did not feature in the final work; the present lot may be among these preparatory works. The double signature is entirely characteristic of Repin’s work from his Paris period.

Please refer to the online catalogue for a contemporary photograph of Maria Grigorevna Ge with Ilya Repin.

We are grateful to Lyudmila Andrushenko, Senior Researcher of the Repin Museum, Penates, for her assistance in cataloguing this lot.