Un caffè parigino

Repin painted this in Paris in 1875, sent there on a scholarship from the Saint Petersburg academy while the city was full of new painting. The first Impressionist show had opened the year before, and its lighter, quicker manner was in the air. Here he took on a thoroughly modern French subject, a crowded cafe at night under gaslight and chandeliers, with a fashionable woman seated alone at the front. His backers in Russia were unhappy. They had sent their promising realist abroad to deepen his craft, and grumbled that he was spending it on Parisian night life rather than Russian subjects. He kept altering the picture for years afterward, repainting the seated woman long after he first showed it.