Expression “Repin’s painting “They sailed” has become a real idiom that characterizes a stalemate. The painting, which has become part of folklore, really exists. But Ilya Repin has nothing to do with her.
The painting, which popular rumor attributes to Repin, was created by the artist Soloviev Lev Grigorievich (1839-1919). The canvas is called “Monks. We went to the wrong place." The painting was painted in the 1870s, and until 1938 it entered the Sumy Art Museum.
“Monks. We went to the wrong place.” L. Solovyov
In the 1930s, the painting hung at a museum exhibition next to the paintings of Ilya Repin, and visitors decided that this painting also belonged to the great master. And then they also assigned a sort of “folk” name - “They sailed.”
The plot of Solovyov’s painting is based on a bathing scene. Someone else is undressing on the shore, someone is already in the water. Several women in the painting, beautiful in their nakedness, enter the water. Central figures the paintings are of monks dumbfounded by an unexpected meeting, whose boat was brought to the bathers by an insidious current.
The central figures of the picture
The young monk froze with oars in his hands, not knowing how to react. The elderly shepherd smiles - “They say they have arrived!” Artist amazingly managed to convey the emotions and amazement on the faces of the participants in this meeting.
Lev Solovyov - artist from Voronezh - to a wide circle I don’t know many fans of painting. According to the information that reached him, he was a modest, hardworking, philosophical person. Loved to write everyday scenes from life ordinary people and landscapes.
Lev Solovyov and his painting “Shoemakers”
Very few works by this artist have survived to this day: a few sketches in the Russian Museum, two paintings in a gallery in Ostrogozhsk and conversation piece"Shoemakers" in the Tretyakov Gallery.
Do you know what, what Repin's painting "They sailed"- not Repin at all
written, and called differently - "Monks (We went to the wrong place)". The painting lives in Ukraine, in Sumy art museum them. Nikanor Onatsky, and it was written by Repin’s contemporary, Voronezh artist and teacher Lev Soloviev, who also did a lot of icon painting.
However, the plot of the picture, despite the different name, fits perfectly into the meaning that is given when recalling the supposed work of Repin. When the situation leads to embarrassment of the participants, when it is funny and a little ashamed, when around the corner (literal or allegorical) it turns out to be completely different from what was expected, we exhale and say: “Well, Repin’s painting “They have sailed!”. And we smile – cheerfully or sarcastically, depending on the situation.
Looking at the picture to which this name is firmly attached, it is difficult to maintain seriousness. There is a river on the outskirts, foggy weather, poor visibility. There are monks on the boat. It is not known where they were heading, but clearly to some other place. But in the fog, their boat was carried to the shore where the village women wash themselves. A kind of women's bathhouse on the river. Probably, the monks, when the fog cleared and they found themselves surrounded by many naked young ladies, could only summarize: Repin’s painting “They have sailed”!
What makes the plot funny is the fact that the monks do not take their eyes off the temptations of the devil; on the contrary, they do not take their eyes off the girls. Two mischievous children bring special charm to the picture, who are the only ones who seem to look straight into the viewer’s eyes. It seems that they caught us looking at naked young ladies in a completely unmonastic way, and now they will burst into laughter: they got caught, they say. And all we can do is agree and nod: “We don’t deny Repin’s painting “They have sailed,” they say.”
In all likelihood, at one of the exhibitions, the “Monks” that had gone to the wrong place were adjacent to the works of Ilya Repin. By association with the aphoristic title of his other work - “They Didn’t Expect” - this could have arisen as “Repin’s painting “They Sailed”.
“Monks (We went to the wrong place)” by Lev Soloviev. Sumy Art Museum named after. Nikanor Onatsky, Ukraine, Sumy
Description of the artwork “We didn’t expect”
Painting by Repin "We didn't expect it" depicts sudden return exiled revolutionary. Repin's wife Vera Shevtsova, their daughter, mother-in-law, and friends at home posed for the picture. Exile was written from Vsevolod Garshin.
It is noteworthy that Repin initially determined the setting, and the room in the sketches remains virtually unchanged, but the characters were subject to significant changes in the process of work. The artist struggled especially for a long time with the image of the returnee, painfully selecting the right intonations. IN Tretyakov Gallery there is a sketch in which they “didn’t expect” the girl. This is probably a student who was exiled for political activities. The mood of this option is the joy of returning, the joy of meeting and even a feeling of surprise, almost a New Year's gift. Became completely different final version.
Repin’s painting “We Didn’t Expect” from 1884 (the artist will continue to refine it until 1888) shows us a returning man. There is surprise, shock, which will soon be replaced by joy. There is no sense of surprise at all. Initially, the author intended to show an unbroken hero, a freedom fighter. But the final version is about something else. It has strong motives for the return of the prodigal son and the resurrection. The hero looks intensely and painfully into the faces of his family: will they accept him? Will they not also pass their guilty verdict? The person who entered for the most part in the shadows, but we can see the wary gaze of huge eyes. They contain a question and an attempt to justify themselves, they contain a dilemma between the dictates of his conscience, which he followed, and the fact that he left his family. Are they waiting for him here? How will he be received?
Consider the furnishings: bare wooden floors, modest wallpaper, everything is very clean and rather poor - there are clearly no extra funds here. On the wall are photographic portraits of Shevchenko and Nekrasov, a reproduction of a painting by Karl Steuben dedicated to the Passion of Christ, and Alexander II killed by the Narodnaya Volya (portrait by Konstantin Makovsky). The portraits leave no doubt that the exile had political overtones. A biblical allusions make it clear that the return of a hero who has endured much torment is like a resurrection from the dead.
Repin's skill is fully reflected in the choice of the moment - the peak, the most acute: the son, husband, father has returned and has already entered the room, the frightened maid who let him in and one of the other servants are standing at the door and watching how events will develop further. But his family is aware of his return dear person right this second. An old mother and a revolutionary's wife in black mourning clothes. The mother has risen from her chair, stretches her weakened hand forward; we do not see her eyes, but we guess that there is hope, fear, joy and, most likely, tears in them. She peers intently at the man who entered dressed as a convict, and now finally recognizes him as her son.
The wife, sitting at the piano, perked up and froze, ready to jump up in the next moment and throw herself on the newcomer’s neck. Her eyes are widened, timid joy breaks through mistrust and fear, her hand convulsively squeezes the armrest. The girl was probably very young when her father was exiled, she doesn’t recognize him, she’s slouched and looks wary, she’s agitated by the tension she doesn’t understand caused by the appearance of this strange man. But the older boy, on the contrary, is all stretched out in the direction of his father, his mouth is open, his eyes are shining and, probably, in the next moment he will squeal joyfully. In the next moment there will be everything: tears mixed with laughter, hugs. And now is the moment preceding this, and aspirations, fears and hopes are reflected in it with incredible skill. Repin's brush took what was happening out of the everyday context and added monumentality, a universal human factor - we are not talking about a specific returned exile, we are talking about faith, love, fear, conscience and hope.
The painting was first shown at the XII traveling exhibition. She left few people indifferent; opinions were divided into two opposing camps. Close friend Repin critic Vladimir Stasov said that this “ his largest, most important, most perfect creation". And reactionary criticism, not satisfied with the plot, tore the picture to smithereens, making a sarcastic play on the title. A review was published in Moskovskie Vedomosti, ending with the words “pathetic genius, bought at the price of artistic mistakes, by playing along with the curiosity of the public, through the “slave language.” This is worse than a crime, this is a mistake... We didn’t expect it! What a falsehood...”
Even Pavel Tretyakov had complaints about the painting, which did not stop him from buying the painting for his collection.
And here is the first version, a sketch of the painting “We Didn’t Expect”:
This is probably a student who was exiled for political activities.
Collected material based on articles Alena Esaulova (from the site
Soloviev L. G. "Monks. We went to the wrong place"
"One wrong move and you're a father." This brilliant phrase from Zhvanetsky could characterize the metamorphosis that happened to this picture.
This painting gave way to another in history stable expression, known as "Repin's painting "They sailed". This is what we say when we find ourselves in a situation of embarrassment, when we all feel both funny and ashamed, when suddenly, around a turn of fate, we see something completely different from what we expected.
That’s when we say, sighing sadly, “Well, here’s Repin’s painting “We have sailed!”
In fact, this painting is not at all the work of the great artist Ilya Repin. The only thing he says here is that this painting was once presented at the same exhibition as Repin’s works.
This happened in the distant 30s of the last century. In the Ukrainian city of Sumy, an exhibition of Repin’s works was held at the local art museum, and next to one of the works they placed this painting by the artist Solovyov. It was called “Monks. We went to the wrong place."
A modest person and wonderful artist, all his life he painted people of the simplest class. And if it weren’t for this historical curiosity with his painting “Monks. We went to the wrong place,” then no one would know about him today.
The work itself was written in the 1870s. The painting depicts monks in a boat, apparently accidentally sailing down the river to a place where women were bathing.
It can be seen that there is fog on the river, at least in the morning, the fog is apparently clearing, the outskirts of the village, women are washing with their children. It is difficult to understand where the monks were going, but when the fog cleared, they realized that their boat had clearly landed in the wrong place.
The funny thing is that the lost priests do not at all take their eyes off the devilish temptation, from the sight of naked girls, they look with all their eyes, as if trying to remember everything down to the smallest detail.
And only two mischievous children understand the comedy of the situation, and look us, the viewer, straight in the eyes, smiling slyly and mischievously. It feels like the boys caught us in the fact that we are not at all monastically looking at women washing themselves.
They're about to start laughing: "Well, gotcha!"
Thus, Repin became, as it were, the “father” of a work to which he had nothing to do. Popular rumor attributed paternity to him, mistakenly considering it to be Repin's.
To do this, it was enough to hang Solovyov’s painting next to Repin.
Well, here we are...
The expression “Repin’s painting “They have sailed”” has become a real idiom that characterizes a stalemate. The painting, which has become part of folklore, really exists. But Ilya Repin has nothing to do with her.
The painting, which popular rumor attributes to Repin, was created by the artist Soloviev Lev Grigorievich (1839-1919). The canvas is called “Monks. We went to the wrong place." The painting was painted in the 1870s, and until 1938 it entered the Sumy Art Museum.
In the 1930s, the painting hung at a museum exhibition next to the paintings of Ilya Repin, and visitors decided that this painting also belonged to the great master. And then they also assigned a sort of “folk” name - “They sailed.”
The plot of Solovyov’s painting is based on a bathing scene. Someone else is undressing on the shore, someone is already in the water. Several women in the painting, beautiful in their nakedness, enter the water. The central figures of the picture are monks, dumbfounded by an unexpected meeting, whose boat was brought to the bathers by an insidious current.
The young monk froze with oars in his hands, not knowing how to react. The elderly shepherd smiles - “They say they have arrived!” The artist amazingly managed to convey the emotions and amazement on the faces of the participants in this meeting.
Lev Solovyov, an artist from Voronezh, is little known to a wide circle of art fans. According to the information that reached him, he was a modest, hardworking, philosophical person. He loved to paint everyday scenes from the lives of ordinary people and landscapes.
Very few works by this artist have survived to this day: several sketches in the Russian Museum, two paintings in a gallery in Ostrogozhsk and the genre painting “Shoemakers” in the Tretyakov Gallery.
Opens at the Tretyakov Gallery main exhibition year: anniversary exhibition of Ilya Repin. “The Table” presents several works of the artist that cannot be missed
The Repin exhibition has been in preparation for several years - imagine how much correspondence and approvals are needed to bring together paintings from 26 museums and private collections. The result was an unprecedented event on a global scale.
"Barge Haulers on the Volga"
This is the earliest work of Repin, who wrote “Barge Haulers” while still a student at the Academy of Arts, when young people were supposed to write in biblical stories. The public saw the painting in 1873 in St. Petersburg at an art exhibition of works of painting and sculpture intended to be sent to Vienna for the World Exhibition. Reviews were mixed. For example, Fyodor Dostoevsky exclaimed enthusiastically: “You can’t help but love them, these defenseless ones, you can’t leave without loving them. One cannot help but think that he should, really owes it to the people... After all, this burlatsky “party” will be seen in dreams later, in fifteen years it will be remembered! If they weren’t so natural, innocent and simple, they wouldn’t make an impression and wouldn’t create such a picture.”
But academic circles called the painting “the greatest profanation of art,” “the embodiment of thin ideas transferred from newspaper articles.”
"Self-Portrait"
1878 
This is the earliest known pictorial self-portrait of Repin, painted after the young artist received the highest award of the Academy of Arts - the Grand gold medal, entitling you to a free trip abroad to continue your studies. Returning home, Repin wanted to settle in Moscow, where he joined the Association of Mobile art exhibitions. According to the rules, admission to the Partnership was carried out after candidates had completed “exhibition experience,” but an exception was made for Repin: he was accepted, neglecting formalities, in February 1878. Ilya Repin painted his portrait especially for the 6th Traveling Exhibition.
"Princess Sophia"
1879 
Repin immediately became a frequent guest at art gatherings in the house of millionaire Savva Mamontov in Moscow and the Abramtsevo estate near Moscow, where artists, musicians and theater figures gathered. Wanting to please his Moscow friends, Repin paints a portrait of the Moscow heroine herself - Princess Sofya Alekseevna (the full author's title of the picture is “Ruler Princess Sofya Alekseevna a year after her imprisonment Novodevichy Convent during the execution of the archers and the torture of all her servants in 1698"). Valentina Serova's mother Valentina Semyonovna, composer Pavel Blaramberg's sister Elena Apreleva and a certain dressmaker posed for Sofia Repin, and Repin's wife Vera Alekseevna personally sewed the dress according to sketches brought from the Armory.
However, criticism received the picture more than coolly. They wrote that the image of Sophia turned out to be static, that instead of the tragic figure of the princess, viewers saw on the canvas “some kind of blurry woman who took up all the free space on the canvas.” Perhaps the only close person who supported Repin was Kramskoy, who called “Sofia” a historical painting.
« Procession V Kursk province»
1883 
In the summer of 1881, Repin made a special trip to the Kursk province - to the Korennaya Hermitage - to attend a solemn religious procession - the carrying of a miraculous icon.
After two years of work, the painting was presented at the 11th exhibition of the Association of Traveling Art Exhibitions. Critic and painter Igor Grabar in his monograph about Repin wrote: ““Procession in the Kursk Province” is the most mature and successful work of Repin of all that he had created before. No wonder he worked on it for so long. Each actor the paintings here are seen in life, sharply characterized and typified: not only in the foreground, but also there, in the distance, where the already rising street dust erases the clarity of contours, forms and expression - and there this crowd is not leveled, as backgrounds all the paintings depicting the crowd, and there it lives, breathes, moves, acts. You can talk about individual characters - main and secondary - for hours, because the more you look at them, the more you are amazed at their diversity, slowness and accuracy with which the artist snatched them from life ... "
"We didn't expect it"
1884 
In 1884, Repin showed the painting “They Didn’t Expect” at the 12th Traveling Exhibition, and it immediately became the center of artistic controversy. Contemporaries wondered who was depicted in the picture. The critic Stasov called the returnee the Messiah, and compared the painting with Ivanov’s famous painting “The Appearance of Christ to the People.” His opponents called the hero of the picture prodigal son and remembered the Gospel parable.
Repin himself did not know the answer to this question, who redrew the main character more than 12 times, trying to capture the facial expression that close people have at the moment of a sudden and long-awaited meeting. Even when the canvas joined the private collection of paintings by the merchant Pavel Tretyakov, Ilya Efimovich, secretly from the owner of the apartment, secretly made his way into the hall, where he worked until dawn, until he achieved the emotional movement that he had been looking for for a long time.
“The Cossacks write a letter to the Turkish Sultan»
1891 
Repin worked on the theme “Cossacks write a letter to the Turkish Sultan” for almost 12 years. He either changed the figures, removing some and adding others, or abandoned the canvas in the studio, as if forgetting about it. But then he invariably returned to his plan.
“If you could see all the metamorphoses that took place here in both corners of the picture... what was not there! – he wrote in one of the letters. – There was also a horse’s face; there was also a shirt on his back; there was a laughing man - a magnificent figure - everything was not satisfactory... Every spot, color, line must be expressed together to express the general mood of the plot and be consistent and characterize every subject in the picture.”
In 1891, “Cossacks” were first shown at Repin’s personal exhibition. After a resounding success at several exhibitions in Russia and abroad, “Cossacks” visited Chicago, Budapest, Munich and Stockholm in the same year, the painting was bought by the Emperor himself Alexander III. Moreover, the tsar paid 35 thousand rubles for it - gigantic money at that time.
"Anniversary meeting of the State Council"
1901 
This is the largest of all Russian paintings ever written: width 9 meters, height 4 meters.
Repin received the order in April 1901. By that time, he already had serious health problems; the artist could not have mastered such a scale alone in such a short time, so he asked for assistants. Repin's assistants were his students Ivan Kulikov and Boris Kustodiev. The first painted the left side of the picture, the second painted the right. Repin took over the center.
They started work a few days before the anniversary, starting with the interior. On the day of the ceremonial meeting, in addition to drawing supplies, the painter brought an easel and a camera into the hall.
Portrait of N.B. Nordman-Severovoy
Natalia Nordman – common-law wife Repina. Natalya Borisovna promoted the ideas of equal rights for women, marriage reform, emancipation of servants, and vegetarianism. He and Repin met in 1891, and soon the artist became interested in the extraordinary young woman. In her name, he bought an estate near St. Petersburg, called Nordman “Penates”. After completing work on the painting “The Ceremonial Meeting of the State Council...” Repin finally left St. Petersburg and began to live in Penates all year round. Repin and Nordman spent the autumn months of 1905 in the southern foothills of the Alps on Lake Garda in Italy. By the way, the very composition of the portrait and the general color scheme indicate how interested Repin was modern trends in European painting.
Portrait of P.A. Stolypin
1910 
The portrait was commissioned by the Saratov City Duma in honor of the election of Pyotr Arkadyevich Stolypin, Minister of Internal Affairs and Chairman of the Council of Ministers, to the post of honorary citizen of the city.
For the ceremonial portrait, which was to be placed in the hall of the City Duma, Repin chose an unofficial image of a politician - in civilian clothes (not in a uniform), in a free pose, reading a newspaper. The main focus of the portrait is the disturbing bright red background. Later, in a letter to Chukovsky, he explained that he painted Stolypin on purpose - “on a volcano.”
“Hopak. Dance Zaporozhye Cossacks»
1926 
At the age of 82, Repin, who by that time found himself in exile in Finland, began his last great job“Hopak. Dance of the Zaporozhye Cossacks,” the idea of which he described as “cheerful and lively.”
"Hopak" is a symbolic canvas for late creativity artist, the completion of the theme “last Zaporozhye Sich”, which worried him so much throughout his life. Repin recalled Beautiful places, familiar to him from a young age, where, in his words, “songs, Cossack songs, did not stop, and in the evening there was certainly a hopak dance with high jumping on the knitting needles... Vocal girls... They sing all night, and when do they sleep? After all, they get up to work early..."