Duel

Dueling was illegal in Russia in the 1890s and still quietly went on among officers and gentlemen defending their honor. Repin painted the seconds after the shot. One man has fallen, held up by his companions while a doctor hurries over, and across the clearing the man who hit him turns away and calmly lights a cigarette. That small cold gesture is the whole point. When the picture was shown, viewers argued fiercely over whether it condemned the practice or merely recorded it, and many took it as a plain protest against the waste of it. Repin made more than one version of the scene. An earlier one, once titled with a cry for mercy, went to a private buyer in Italy.