Portrait of the artist INKramskoy Ilya Repin (1844-1930)

Description of Ilya Repin’s painting "Portrait of I. N. Kramskoi".

In this work we see a portrait of the famous Russian painter Ivan Nikolayevich Kramsky. It always raises many questions as to how one painter allowed his portrait to be painted by another painter. But Repin and Kramskoi were connected by a long friendly relationship, so in this work, we see, literally, a part of Repin’s soul, his feelings for the man.

The picture shows Kramskoy in a sitting position. This is not a young man, he looks about 40-50 years. The skin on his hands already aged, there was gray in his hair, and his beard is completely white. It seems as if the portrayed man is not posing at home, where he could have put on comfortable clothes and lounged imposingly on the couch. What we have in front of us is a man in a strict, rather formal suit. He is wearing a dark, brownish-black overcoat, or an elongated jacket. Snow-white cuffs are peeping out from under the coat. The pants on the artist are also dark, almost black. This meager color scheme in drawing the clothes is fully compensated by the pale face of the poseur.

The artist’s face is very tense. He is concentrated, looking directly at us from the picture. His gaze is quite austere, perhaps dissatisfied. Ilya Repin was not just a friend of Kramskoi. He originally considered him his teacher, his patron in art. This is probably the reason why we see such an austere expression on Kramskoi’s face.

The backdrop of the canvas is the wall of the room. The painter skillfully stretched the light from dark to light. It seems that the background is grayish in one part of the painting and turquoise in the other. But a simple stretch would look unfinished in the work, so the artist draws the background with sharp, sweeping strokes.

The painting is done in a dark color scheme. The brightest spots in the work are the white shirt and the face of Ivan Nikolayevich Kramsky. Thus Repin emphasizes the importance of emotions, the inner world of the portrayed. At the same time he completely removes the emphasis from the surroundings.