IV

IN REPIN'S STUDIO

SOVIET Russia has been repudiated by Russia's great artists. The national school of painting there is broken up. What has happened to the less-known artists it is difficult to say, but the famous ones have made their homes abroad. Roerich has come into his own in America, where his pictures have been suitably housed at public expense. Repin, the greatest of them all, sits and works in Finland.

He is eighty years old; his canvases are better known in Russia than those of Turner are in England. He is acknowledged by the Soviet regime as much as by the Russian émigrés to be a veritable king of painters, and very gladly would Lunacharsky receive him in Moscow if he could be prevailed upon to return.

He was, of course, more identified with St. Petersburg than with Moscow, and is greatly

attached to the old capital, where he still has friends now languishing in poverty.

"I have had to give up corresponding with them," said the old man. "My letters do not reach. It is too much for me; I cannot bring myself to write Leningrad on the envelopes, and the post now refuses to deliver letters unless the new name is used."

It would be very lonely for Repin in his villa "Penati" on the Gulf of Finland were it not for the company of his son and daughter and the great vivid canvases with which he is surrounded. Few can get to Kuokkala to do him homage. His life is a hermit's life, far from the haunts of men.

He lives but an afternoon's stroll from the Soviet line, upon the old high-road to St. Petersburg. The old milestones tell him how far it used to be. But it is a closed way. No motors come bounding along from the palaces of the Neva any more; no peasant carts toil with produce to the great market. So near and yet so far!

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On the other hand, it is far to Helsingfors, the nearest port of embarkation for Western Europe and the places where the exiled Russians now mostly live. Few cultured Russians remain in Finland if they can get away. For there is no possibility of practising a profession-doctors may

not cure, lawyers may not plead. One of the greatest surgeons in Russia, Professor Zaidler, remains in Finland, but is debarred from using his great skill and knowledge. He probably will go to Czecho-Slovakia or France in course of time. Besides Repin and Zaidler I know of no other distinguished Russian émigrés in Finland, though there are several landless aristocrats still in the cities.

The thirty thousand Russians in the Gulf of Finland rayon are mostly country folk and the one-time workers and servers of the resorts. They know little about art, but they are nevertheless proud of Repin. They look after him in the street; they flock to him at his studio on certain days. Miss Repin keeps open house for visitors on Wednesday, and her father indefatigably conducts parties among his works.

The greatest picture is one on which the artist has been working forty years. It is very large, and represents a Little Russian religious crowd bearing in triumph a wonder-working ikon. The ikon is preceded by a marvellous deacon, a huge fellow with tremendous face all lighted up with faith and the popular religious emotion. His mouth is wide with song, and his processional aspect gives great drive and movement to the whole of the scene. In the accompanying crowd are

carefully studied faces. It is not a portrait of a scene so much as a synthetic picture of emotional religious scenes in Russia. The faces are faces seen by Repin at various occasions in his life, remembered and then painted in. The religious festivities of the Russian monasteries often brought pilgrims from exceedingly remote places and reproduced facial types of bygone centuries. Repin has evidently an eye for these traditional physiognomies and has immortalised several in this picture.

A somewhat similar method of collection and study seems to be employed in another great canvas which, however, is likely to remain unfinished, a representation of a solemn opening of the Russian Senate. The chairs are all there, but only a few of the historical personages sitting in them have been painted in. Each is to be a study in portraiture, and indeed Repin was able to show a remarkable series of preliminary sketches. In the actual picture much care has been lavished on Count Witte, a favourite of Repin's. But even the seat where the Tsar should be enthroned is vacant, and a strange impression is conveyed by the portrait of Von Plehve standing facing the empty chair and giving his report vis-à-vis with the invisible.

Another very striking picture is a portrait of Kerensky, commissioned from America during the days of Kerensky's short fame, but never delivered.

"They came to me and said, 'Do not think about the money; any number of dollars that you like to mention will be forthcoming for this portrait,'" said Repin to me. "I have, however, kept it for myself."

It was done during the last days of Kerensky's power. The old man described to me how for the last sitting he went to the Winter Palace and, finding it completely empty, wandered from room to room, seeking Kerensky, who had, however, gone for good.

"Priceless treasures absolutely unguarded," said Repin. And the only sound that of the soldiers in the Palace Yard practising gymnastics and playing games."

He has painted the face of Kerensky in the style of the false Dmitri.

"The usurper," said the old man, quietly and complacently, as we stood and looked at the small, vain, neurasthenical face.

I have never seen Kerensky, but I should say his portrait by Repin is more unforgettable than he.