On ne l'attendait pas

In the 1880s, exiled political prisoners were starting to come home to Russia, and Repin spent years working on this exact instant of homecoming. A thin, worn man steps through the doorway into a bright family room, and nobody quite knows how to react. His mother is rising from her chair, which she has just pushed aside. A child at the table stares at a stranger he may not remember. Repin reworked the returning man's face again and again, unsure whether he should look defiant or broken. Look at the wall behind them. There is a portrait of the reigning tsar, Alexander III, hanging near pictures of favourite Russian poets, quietly telling you what kind of household this is and what the man was exiled for. It took Repin about four years to finish the scene.