Black Woman

Repin painted this in Paris at the very end of 1875 and the start of 1876, living there on a travelling scholarship from the Academy of Arts in St Petersburg. The year before, the Spanish painter Mariano Fortuny had died at 36, and the memorial exhibition of his work in Paris left Repin astonished at its elegance and its handling of light. This canvas is his answer to it, painted in a polished salon manner far from the subjects he was known for at home. He sent it to the Paris Salon in the spring of 1876. A private buyer took it, and it then vanished from view for some 60 years, until the Russian Museum bought it in 1938.