Was für eine Freiheit!

By 1903 Russia's universities were seething with strikes, expulsions, and students clashing with the authorities, and that is the world this picture stepped into. Repin, over 60 and living at Kuokkala on the Gulf of Finland, showed a student and a young woman standing on the frozen shore as the waves broke the first ice around their feet, the man laughing with his arms flung wide. Viewers argued at once. Some saw a symbol of ideological freedom and cheered; others saw only a reckless student and complained. Repin said the whole thing came from a real moment he had watched on the ice below his house, and that he had wanted to catch the delight of the young in the roaring water.