Magnet Ilya Répine - Léon Tolstoï with barefoot, 1891

Ilia Répine is a Russian painter. An emblematic figure of the art world of the time, he was interested in various aspects of cultural life: literature, music, science... He was very close to many Russian personalities such as the writer Tolstoy, the composer Mussorgsky and the collector Tretyakov. From the beginning of his creative activity in the 1870s, Répine became one of the key figures of Russian realism. He succeeded in reflecting the diversity of life around him in his paintings, in embracing all the dimensions of contemporaneity in his work, in addressing the themes running through society and in reacting strongly to current events. Répine's work flourished in the 1880s. He composed a gallery of portraits of his contemporaries and worked as a painter of history and genre scenes. In historical painting he was attracted by the prospect of expressing the emotional power of the scene depicted. He also found inspiration in the painting of contemporary society, and even when depicting a legendary past, he remained a master of representing the immediate, abolishing any distance between the viewer and the characters in his work.