Herbststrauß

By 1892 Ilya Repin had bought a country estate called Zdravnyovo, on the Dvina river, and was spending long stretches painting out of doors. This is his eldest daughter Vera, standing at the edge of a garden gone over to autumn, holding a loose bunch of the last flowers she had gathered. Russia knew Repin for thundering history pictures and portraits of the famous, but out here he wanted something quieter, a person set into real weather and shifting light. Vera looks straight out, faintly amused, her dark dress scattered with small flowers that echo the ones in her hands. He kept the painting himself for a time before it passed to Pavel Tretyakov, the Moscow merchant whose collection grew into the gallery that holds it now.