Taking a rest

By 1882 Repin was the most talked-about painter in Russia, known for big public canvases crowded with barge haulers and processions and political feeling. This is something quieter, made at home. It shows his wife, Vera, sunk deep into an armchair in a red dress with a lace collar, her head tipped back and her eyes closed, caught not posing for him but simply resting, perhaps half asleep. That same year he sent the picture to the travelling exhibition of the Peredvizhniki, the realist painters who carried their art out to the provinces instead of showing only in the capital.