Ilya Repin

Barge Haulers on the Volga — Russian realism

The greatest Russian realist painter. Barge Haulers on the Volga — eleven men dragging a boat upstream, exhausted and monumental — is the most famous Russian painting after Rublev's Trinity. His portraits of Tolstoy, Mussorgsky, and other contemporaries are the visual record of the Russian golden age.

Key works

• Barge Haulers on the Volga1873— Human labor as monumental suffering
  Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
• Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks1891— Riotous laughter — the most joyful history painting ever made
  Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
• Portrait of Mussorgsky1881— Painted days before the composer's death — devastating honesty
  Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow

Connections

External