Refusal of Confession

In November 1879 Repin read a poem called The Last Confession in an underground journal put out by the People's Will, the revolutionary group formed that summer, which had already passed a death sentence on Alexander II. The author was the poet Nikolai Minsky, and the critic Vladimir Stasov read it with him. The poem is a scene in a condemned cell, a priest offering confession before the execution and the prisoner refusing it. Repin began the picture at once and kept returning to it until 1885. It is small, about 48 by 59 centimetres, and almost all of it is dark. Between those two dates the tsar was killed by a bomb on a Petersburg street and five of the conspirators were hanged.