Ceremonial Sitting of the State Council on 7 May 1901 Marking the Centenary of its Foundation

On 7 May 1901 the State Council of imperial Russia marked its hundredth birthday with a ceremony in the round hall of the Mariinsky Palace in Saint Petersburg, and Repin was commissioned to record it. The result, finished in 1903, is enormous, four metres tall and eight wide, with 81 recognisable figures, Tsar Nicholas the Second and his ministers among them. Repin worked from photographs and quick oil studies of individual members, and he had help from two young students at the Academy, Boris Kustodiev and Ivan Kulikov, both of whom went on to careers of their own. Look at the men painted from behind, turned away from us toward the throne. It makes the viewer feel placed inside the room. Within 16 years the state this picture celebrates would be gone.