Lot Essay
The sitters are the artist's daughter Tat'iana Ilinichna with her husband, Nikolai Gennadievich Iazev, in an officer's uniform of an engineer in the Academy of General Staff, and their two daughters Luibov Gennadievna (Liubochka), at the table, and Taisia Gennadievna (Tassenka) in the arms of a nurse. Iazev's mother is portrayed seated at the table. The interior is of the artist's apartments at the Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg where he was director, 1898-1899, and Head of the School of Fine Arts from 1894-1907.
This picture is typical of Repin's work, representing the everyday realism that characterised his output both in genre painting such as Procession of the Cross in Kursk Province and Barge Haulers on the Volga, as well as his domestic and portrait painting. In this respect he continued the aims of 'the Wanderers' (Peredvizhniki) who some 30 years earlier had rejected the enforced rules of formality of the Academy of Arts and set up their own artistic groups to try and give their works a wider audience.
The great Russian critic, Igor Grabar', in his monograph on Repin gives a detailed description of this painting, referring to it as a Study for a Family Portrait as it had been described as such in the 34th Wanderers' exhibition of 1906.
This picture is typical of Repin's work, representing the everyday realism that characterised his output both in genre painting such as Procession of the Cross in Kursk Province and Barge Haulers on the Volga, as well as his domestic and portrait painting. In this respect he continued the aims of 'the Wanderers' (Peredvizhniki) who some 30 years earlier had rejected the enforced rules of formality of the Academy of Arts and set up their own artistic groups to try and give their works a wider audience.
The great Russian critic, Igor Grabar', in his monograph on Repin gives a detailed description of this painting, referring to it as a Study for a Family Portrait as it had been described as such in the 34th Wanderers' exhibition of 1906.