Ilya Repin

Ilya Repin was born in Chuhuiv in Ukraine, painted icons as a teenager and studied at the Imperial Academy of Arts in Saint Petersburg. Barge Haulers on the Volga made his name in 1873, and he became the leading painter among the Peredvizhniki realists. His Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan was pulled from exhibition in 1885. He also painted searching portraits of Tolstoy and Mussorgsky, and died at his house in Kuokkala, which had become part of Finland after the revolution.