They Did Not Expect Him

Ilya Repin completed his seven years of study at the Imperial Academy of Arts in 1871[1] and was awarded the Grand Gold Medal of the academy for the painting "The Resurrection of the Daughter of Jairus", also receiving the title of a class artist of the 1st degree, as well as the right to a fellowship trip abroad. From 1873 to 1876, the artist lived and worked abroad, mostly in France.[2]

Repin returned from Paris to St. Petersburg in July 1876[3] and later went back to his hometown of Chuguev where he stayed until September 1877.[4] After that, he returned to Moscow,[5] where he lived and worked for the next five years. Starting from 1877, Repin worked on the theme of procession. His main work on this theme, "Religious Procession in Kursk Governorate", was started in 1880 in Moscow, and completed in 1883 in St. Petersburg, where the artist moved in September 1882.[6] Even before the move, in a letter dated 2 January 1881, Repin wrote to art critic Vladimir Stasov:[7]

... I will move to St. Petersburg and begin the paintings I have long conceived from the most burning reality that surrounds us, understandable to us and exciting us more than all past events.

In the early 1880s, Repin was greatly influenced by the assassination of Emperor Alexander II by Pervomartovtsy, literally meaning those of March 1, as well as by the public execution of the executors of the assassination, which he attended.[8][9] In the mid-late 1870s, Repin conceived the idea of creating a series of paintings on the theme of Narodism, a political movement of the Russian intelligentsia in the 1870s. The earliest of the "Narodniki" series is the painting "Under Escort. On The Muddy Road" (Под конвоем. По грязной дороге; 1876), followed by"Arrest of a Propagandist" (Арест пропагандиста; 1880–1889), "Before Confession" (Перед исповедью; 1879–1885) and "Meeting" (Сходка; 1883).[10][11][12]

In March 1883, the 11th travelling exhibition opened in St. Petersburg, which presented the "Religious Procession in the Kursk Province" and several other works by Repin.[13] In the second half of May of the same year, Ilya Repin, together with Vladimir Stasov, went on a trip to Europe, during which they visited Berlin, Dresden, Munich, Paris, Madrid, Venice, and several cities in the Netherlands.[14] In early June, Repin returned to St. Petersburg, and later settled in the dacha village of Martyshkino near Oranienbaum.[15]

First version of They Did Not Expect Him (1883)

There are two different versions of They Did Not Expect Him. The first began in 1883 and depicted the return of a student to her family. This painting, painted in oil on wood, is of a relatively small format, 45.8 × 37 cm.[16][17] Fifteen years later, in 1898, Repin reworked this version, making several changes to the figure of the young woman,[18] whose face was reminiscent of his daughter Nadia.[19] It is currently in the collections of the Tretyakov Gallery.[16]

Sketch for They Did Not Expect Him (1884)

Art historian Ilya Zilberstein wrote about the first version of They Did Not Expect Him in his 1948 article entitled "New pages of the creative biography of Repin". According to him, the painting was originally supposed to have a young girl as the main character. Her revolutionary clothing strongly resembled that of The Student in Nikolai Yaroshenko's painting as the heroines were both dressed in a plaid with a small cap on their heads. Ilya Zilberstein suggests that when Repin saw The Student and read the reviews of this painting in the press, he decided to replace the character of the young girl in the second version of his painting with that of a young man.[20]

In 1884, Repin began to paint a second version, which would become the main one. It was much larger in size, and the woman entering the room was replaced by a man. The painter worked on it in his country house in Martyshkino, near Saint Petersburg, and he chose members of his family and acquaintances to pose for the painting.[21] The model for the mother of the exile is thus partly Vera Alexeievna, Repin's wife and partly Varvara Komarova, Stasov's daughter; that of the mother, Evguenia Chevtsova, the painter's aunt; that of the child, Sergei Kostytchev, the son of a neighbour, who would later be a renowned biochemist, professor and academician; that of the young girl, Vera Repina, the painter's eldest daughter; and that of the maid, an employee of the Repins.[22][23][24] The face of the man entering is thought to be that of Vsevolod Garshin, whose portrait Repin worked on in 1884. In an intermediate version of the painting, the resemblance to the writer is complete.[25][26][27]

In the first sketches, the father of the exile is also represented, warning everyone else of his arrival. The critic Vladimir Stasov also mentions the silhouette of "an old man". In the final version, Repin leaves only the characters who, from his point of view, are necessary for the psychological development of the theme he has chosen and for the "coherence of the scenic action".[22]

The painting was included, from 1884, in the 12th itinerant exhibition of the Peredvizhniki, which was then in Saint-Petersburg. Pavel Tretyakov had decided to not buy the painting[27] by telling Repin that the canvas had many qualities, but also defects; its subject did not interest him, but it would, it seemed to him, touch the public.[28] Repin himself also was not completely satisfied with the way the painting visually deals with the theme of the return from exile.[29] They Did Not Expect Him then moved to different cities of Russia with the travelling exhibition.[28] At the end of the trip, Pavel Tretyakov informed Repin that he had decided to buy the canvas. Repin had also received another offer, from Fyodor Tereshchenko but refused to sell it as he wanted to retouch the male character. When the work was completed, Pavel Tretyakov finally managed to acquire the painting for his collection, raising the purchase price from 5,000 to 7,000 rubles.[27]

Repin worked on the painting again in 1885, 1887 and 1888. The modifications that he made related mainly to the expression on the exiled man's face. The canvas in its state before the modifications of 1885 was photographed by Andrey Denyer, who offered this photograph in 1884 to the art critic Vladimir Stasov.[16]

The moment that the canvas captures is when a man enters a room. He is an exile, most likely an activist of the Narodnaya Volya, a 19th-century revolutionary political organization in Russia, returning from a remote region of Russia. He was not expected by those in the room, who appear to be his family.

Repin expresses the full range of their emotions, in their diversity, and in the very moment they are made. There is the hesitant joy of the woman seated at the piano, the wife of the exiled man, and that of the boy, seated at the table, the young girl who looks to the side, who probably has not yet understood who the man is, the wary astonishment of the maid, standing in the entrance, the middle-aged woman, in the foreground — his mother, whose bent figure expresses profound upheaval.[30][31]

The emotion of the man is also palpable. Repin painted and modified the expression of his face and the inclination of his head at least three times. Repin had to choose a head inclination position between the elevation of the hero and the lassitude of the martyr, and he finally retained an expression of questioning and uncertainty, where there remains also heroism and suffering.[22]

The pictorial composition is organized around the figures of the exile and his mother, and their exchange of gazes. The mother is the link connecting her son, still a stranger in this luminous interior, to the other members of the family. The movement she makes towards him, underlined by the chair she pushes aside, is in the foreground of the painting.[22][29] Her hand and that of her daughter-in-law, seated at the piano, both occupy the centre of the painting.[22]

The secondary characters, like the child, seated at the table in the right part of the painting, give life, consistency and a lyrical warmth to the painting. Other details also contribute to this, such as the posture of the little girl with her singularly curved legs, and, painted with sensitivity, all the furnishings of an apartment typical of a family of the intelligentsia of that time.[22]

• Details of characters
• 
  Returned exile
• 
  Mother and wife of the exile
• 
  Boy and girl
• 
  Maid and cook

Repin also brings out the political and spiritual dimension of a return occurring after a conviction for revolutionary activity. In this period of history, when the condemnations to long sentences were numerous, this return would've been considered "an unexpected and miraculous event" and even like a "resurrection". The figure of the mother rising from her armchair to meet his son evokes the treatment of scenes from the Gospels, such as the resurrection of Lazarus or the Last Supper at Emmaus. It's also similar to Alexander Ivanov's painting The Appearance of Christ Before the People[32] and establishes a link with the theme of guilt, the return of the prodigal son.[29]

The wall of the apartment is decorated with reproductions that support the political and moral symbolism of the painting. These are the portraits of the democratic writers Nikolay Nekrasov and Taras Shevchenko, of a Christ on Golgotha, which is a symbol of suffering and atonement, and an image of revolutionary intellectuals. There is also an image of Emperor Alexander II on his deathbed, killed by the Narodniki.[19][29]

Stylistically, the painting is full of surprises: the side lighting, the perspective, the door frame and the window in a row, the set of frames recall Dutch painters. The colours are very well mixed, "the blues are mixed with green, the browns with greys and purples, the reds are purplish".[33]

• Брук, Я. В.; Иовлева, Л. И. (2006). Государственная Третьяковская галерея — каталог собрания [State Tretyakov Gallery - collection catalog] (in Russian). Vol. 4. Moscow: Красная площадь. ISBN 5-93221-081-8.
• Grabar, Igor (1948). Репин [Repin] (in Russian). Vol. 1. Moscow: Издательство Академии наук СССР.
• Королёва, С. (2010). Илья Ефимович Репин (Великие художники, том 20) [Ilya Efimovich Repin (Great Artists, Volume 20)] (in Russian). Vol. 20. Moscow: Директ-Медиа и Комсомольская правда. ISBN 978-5-87107-193-9.
• Лясковская, О. А. (1982). Илья Ефимович Репин. Жизнь и творчество [Ilya Efimovich Repin. Life and art] (in Russian). Moscow: Искусство.
• Сарабьянов, Дмитрий Владимирович (1955). Народно-освободительные идеи русской живописи второй половины XIX века [People's liberation ideas of Russian painting in the second half of the 19th century] (in Russian). Moscow: Искусство.

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