Portrait of the artist N. N. Ge

In the fall of 1880, Ilya Repin traveled across Ukraine in search of a suitable nature for his "Zaporozhtsev" and on the way I stopped by to visit the artist, whom I once knew well from Petersburg, - Nikolay Nikolaevich Ge.

Author of sensational paintings "The Last Supper" and “Peter I interrogates Tsarevich Alexei Petrovich in Peterhof” after them, he began to seriously experiment with form, going far beyond realistic painting. “In the art of Ge, he taught the primitiveness of the means and the artistic ecstasy with the spirit of the parish elites. Jotto and especially Chimabye do not go y his c language "- told Repin. New pictures of Ge were not successful, he began to experience serious financial difficulties, his relations with the Wanderers were upset, he soon became fascinated with Tolstoyan ideas of forgiveness, left the capital, bought from his father-in-law the estate in the Chernigov province, at Pliska station, and moved there for good.

Repin went to visit a man who was very dear to him and handsome. He remembered how he first saw Ge in the antique hall of the Academy of Arts, along with Kramskywho was just making a copy of The Last Supper by Gay Dark Sauce. For Repin, then still a student, he and the other were masters. Repin knew that Kramskoy was trying to paint a portrait of Ge - and failed: “He consistently interfered with the use of a toothbrush, and the wr

And along the way, Repin recalled how warmly Nikolai Ge welcomed the appearance of the Repinsky "Burlakov".: “He quickly came back, took me for both of them and spoke quickly, much better: Listen, youth, you have no reason to, that, they wrote, - the son of the teacher, the teacher. - This is surprising. "The mighty night" in front of this is nothing. "

“And together with their companions it is a vigorous man, his own special condition; It is possible to name this as an archetypal force. When you look at its beautiful, indispensable figypy, simple, and high-quality, high-quality, and high-quality, the face of a wider range of quality, the face of an open-source, glorious and sophisticated style of the face of the - so repin saw Ge.

However, in Repin Pliskah, he was not met at all by the man whom he remembered well. “He is a sweeping stronghold, in the midst of his armor, a gray man, with a very heavy fire and heat. He received me in a good way ... About Peterbearing, he won and wondered, moved unto the Spirit, and unto him, and he hath worn out, and hath worn out,

More than art, Ge was passionate about farming. He talked about the fact that the Academy doesn’t need real talent, that an artist needs, instead of improving the technique, to develop his imagination. And when Repin gave a hint about the portrait, Ge first closed, and then protested hotly:

- You know, in publicity, this is a worrying thing, that there is something - a person as it is used firstly to hope, give it to him, ...

The popular version says that Ge was scared of the Repin portrait not in vain: he had heard that many Repin models die after sessions! Mussorgsky, Pisemsky, Pirogov really went to another world soon after the end of the portraits, but as soon as Repin decided to depict the poet Tyutchev, Tyutchev also died.

However, with respect to Gay, this is definitely not true: at the time of writing his portrait, both Pisemsky, and Mussorgsky, and Pirogov were still alive, they would be gone only in the next 1881, so Ge could not know about the notoriety of Repin the portrait painter. In 1880, Repin spent two days visiting Nikolai Ghe, and under Gale's portrait was successfully finished. The “self-fulfilling prophecy” did not work. After the portrait, Ge lived another 14 years. He was gone June 1, 1894. Repin in the words of the obituary argued that “The position of the heart is on the heart, it is possible to be schooled to go to the memory of the Mikeranjello, please, when the people of the world die, the body of the masserope is worn.