Portrait of Dmitry Mendeleev Wearing the Edinburgh University Professor Robe

Ilya Repin
Portrait of Dmitry Mendeleev Wearing the Edinburgh University Professor Robe, Ilya Repin, 1885
By ISABEL THOMAS

Ilya Repin used art as a ticket out of his native Ukraine, but during his studies in St. Petersburg and voyages to Western Europe he always painted the common people who reminded him of his upbringing. After receiving a taste of notoriety, Repin abandoned the themes of the Realists to create portraits of Russian nobility. Repin shifted theme again later in his life and began to paint artists of all kinds, be they composers, painters, authors, or scientists. With Portrait of Dmitry Mendeleev Wearing the Edinburgh University Professor Robe, Repin formed a comparison between himself and the Siberian-born creator of the modern Periodic Table.

With a blank background and the company of only books, Repin conveys that Mendeleev’s entire life revolves around academia. His robe colors belong to a specific university, but the graduation cap applies more universally to the academic world. While the books and cap—Repin’s representations of scholarship—exist in black and white, Mendeleev himself is bright and adorned with color. The scientist provides the painting’s light, and his ingenuity stands out from dark surroundings. Repin only needs to give Mendeleev a blank background because the scientist’s genius and achievement fill the canvas on their own.

Repin often painted musicians and academics as a statement that all who add to the world fit into the same category. Painters, composers, and scientists who push the boundaries of their fields and share creations have a common purpose and gift. With the somehow emotional black background and vibrant robes, Repin tells his audience that Mendeleev’s endeavors are beautiful; they are art.

Repin does not need magnificent landscapes in the background to prove his subject’s greatness, because the painting’s radiance lies in Mendeleev's facial expression and its depth within his mind. The scene may initially feel melancholy, but, if one looks at Mendeleev’s face with enough attention, one sees that his mind contains more than the average person can experience. The painting’s viewers are not meant to pity him for his isolation in a dark room, because the light exists within him. If anything, we viewers should envy Mendeleev.

Repin draws out beauty and depth from a scene with the potential to bore. Through this act, Repin proves that he does in fact liken to Mendeleev, because the two men share the genius of innovation.
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The Unexpected Visitor

Emma Shapiro
Ilya Repin, The Unexpected Visitor, 1888
By EMMA SHAPIRO 

The Unexpected Visitor portrays an intellectual prisoner returning home unannounced from an evidently long imprisonment. The most admirable part of Repin's work on this painting is his ability to exhibit the emotions of six different individuals impacted by this event on a singular canvas. In Repin's original drawing of The Unexpected Visitor, he painted the visitor as a female, but changed it to a male in attempt to mimic reality. He also does this in order to make the visitor not only male, but a son, husband, and father simultaneously. 

The returning prisoner draws the eye of the viewer, due to Repin's meticulous use of linear perspective in the floorboards. The eye then wanders to the grandmother standing weakly in shock, and the daughter glaring in confusion and fear. To the right, the older child, a son, looks up excitedly, recognizing his father's return. Unlike the daughter, his age allows him to remember his father, giving the viewer a hint into how long the man's imprisonment lasted. We notice the wife's preoccupation with playing the piano has shifted to staring in utter confusion and no doubt joy for her husbands return. In the back the maid does her duty politely waiting to see the processions. The maid's eye are fixed on the prisoner questioning his identity as well as his intentions. The cook, equally as dark as the man, peeks from behind the maid, intrigued as any bystander in this situation would be. Repin shows the Tsar's rules effects on a family in the late 19th century, and how it individually impacts each person.

The door divides the painting into two halves. One half contains the wealthy family sitting around the table together, surrounded by chairs, paintings, photographs, a map, and a piano. The other half, that the man stands in, is left completely bare, besides the window offering a light source. The door isolates him from his family and brings him down in the social sphere, including him with the working class of maids and cooks. 
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