Portrait of the Composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
Ilya Repin, 1893
For now, just to look at
The photograph we have of this work is not sharp enough to print at the quality we want, so we are not selling it for now. We are looking for a better one.
About the work
- Artist
- Ilya Repin
- Date
- 1893
- Collection
- State Russian Museum, Saint Petersburg
- Reference
- XDV-2236
What the museum label doesn't tell you
Look at where he's looking: not at Repin, not at us, somewhere past the room. That's not a sitter's pose, it's a man still listening to something. Repin later admitted that after hearing Rimsky-Korsakov's 'Antar' suite in 1881 he was so shaken he had to paint that intensity - the result was 'Ivan the Terrible and His Son', one of his most violent canvases. The grey beard, the half-smoked cigarette, the watch chain as the only glint against all that black: this is a man composing inside his own skull. Can you actually paint sound without giving away the trick?
