Portrait of Lidia Kuznetsova

In 1901 Repin took on the biggest commission of his life, a group portrait of the Russian State Council in session, some 80 officials in red and gold, which would occupy him for the next two years. He painted this in the same period. The sitter, Lidia Kuznetsova, was a friend of his daughter Tatyana. She wears black and yellow, enormous lilies are set in her hair and across her shoulders, and a raven perches on her hand. All of that belonged to the symbolist taste the young Petersburg magazines were pushing at the time, handled here by the painter most identified with plain Russian realism. The picture stayed in private hands. Moscow audiences saw it again in 2021, when the Tretyakov Gallery gathered 30 little-known Repins from storerooms and private collections while his famous canvases were away on loan in Helsinki and Paris.