Ilya Efimovich Repin. Portrait of E. N. Zvantseva

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Ilya Efimovich Repin. Portrait of E. N. Zvantseva. 1889, 89;69 cm.

In 1888, the artist Vasily Mate brought a beauty to Repin’s studio - tall, with an elegant figure and a chiseled face. Elizaveta Zvantseva did not intend to become a model - she was a promising artist, attended the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture and dreamed of studying with Repin. At the time of the meeting she was 24 years old.

      44-year-old Repin, who had recently separated completely from his wife, fell in love with his new student and was frightened by the scale and strength of his own passion.

    Repin loved to work with his students: “On Sunday mornings, about six young people gather with me to paint watercolors. Anton, and even Vrubel - these are also talents. So much love and feeling of grace! Chistyakov sowed good seeds, and these young people are golden!!! I'm learning from them..."

      But it didn’t work out that way with Zvantseva. I didn’t succeed in full-fledged studies. Very soon the young woman, who was so eager to become Repin’s student, began to look for excuses to avoid classes. She was, if not scared, then extremely embarrassed...

      “Soon it’s three o’clock, dear Elizaveta Nikolaevna. You won’t come... If you only knew how much suffering I suffered this week!.. So, you won’t come again?! I won’t hear softer but stronger steps on the stairs... I won’t see you anymore?! Goodbye, sweet, lovely, dear... If you only knew how deeply I respect you and how madly I love you! I wish you happiness, more than myself - my life has already been lived, yours is beginning..."

       “How I love you! My God, I never imagined that my feeling for you would grow to such passion. I’m starting to fear for myself... Really, never before in my life, never have I loved anyone so inappropriately, with such self-forgetfulness... Even art has faded away somewhere and you, you are on my mind and in my heart every second. Your image is everywhere. Your wonderful, delightful appearance, your wondrous figure with divinely thin, graceful lines and the most graceful movements!!!

     How have I not seen all this before? I'm surprised, I don't understand! How I could not see before your spiritual characteristics, your moral beauty. Your soul is so inimitable, so elegant, there is so much simplicity, and truth, and depth of mind in it... Now I think - I will never, never tear out of my heart this painfully sweet feeling of you, divinely beautiful. Your slave."

     During 1889, Repin painted five portraits of Zvantseva. The only surviving large portrait, according to the artist's will, was donated to the Athenaeum Museum in Helsinki.