Realism · 1873
Ilya Repin 1844–1930
State Russian Museum · St. Petersburg
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Chapter 1 of 7
In 1873, Ilya Repin unveiled this canvas and nothing in Russian art was the same. Eleven men — bent, weathered, spent — drag a massive barge upriver through a late summer afternoon. The Volga glints behind them, wide and indifferent.
What he made was an indictment.
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