Appreciation of Famous Paintings

In 1871, Repin graduated from the Russian Royal Academy of Fine Arts and received a gold graduation medal. According to the regulations of the academy, he also had the title of first-class artist and a three-year period of study abroad. Chance. Amid the compliments, Repin did not leave the country immediately as usual. The idea of ??"Tracker", another painting that haunted him, stayed with him.

There is a Neva River in front of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Petersburg. Students often take walks by the river in their spare time. The heavy labor of trackers on the Vanne River aroused great feelings in him. Repin had been infected and inspired by the long poem of the poet Nekrasov and the folk songs about trackers in Russia. He decided to create a work about trackers. Before he graduated, he started collecting information about trackers. In the summer of 1870, Repin, the landscape painter Bisiliev and his classmate Makarov spent the entire summer together in villages and towns along the Volga River. The life of trackers there deepened Repin's feelings.

In order to collect materials, Repin consciously got to know and understand the trackers, and became friends with them from strangers. In the trackers' camp, Repin set up pots to cook with them, and ate simple food together. Repin recorded the different experiences and images of the trackers, and tried to penetrate deeply into their spiritual world.

On the wide Volga River, a group of trackers pulling cargo ships were marching hard on the beach. These people, who had suffered from the cold and heat, dragged their heavy footsteps and walked silently on the endless road. Due to the long-term same schedule, they coordinate with each other and take care of each other. The eleven trackers with different personalities and ages on the screen are not only poor people living at the bottom of society, but also a persevering workforce.

The leader of the team of trackers, with a ragged turban on his head, is modeled after a man named Kanin. Although he is ragged, he is still a respectable person. He had a generous and kind face, as if he were a saint who had gone through trials. He had been a priest but became a tracker after losing his job.

The most eye-catching person among the trackers is the youngest boy named Larika, who is wearing a red shirt. He is obviously a newbie and is not used to walking at the same pace. , he held the rope tied to his chest with his hands, trying to relieve the unbearable burden.

Walking in front alongside Kanin was a sturdy farmer who was no longer engaged in farming. Behind Kanin, the tall man wearing a hat and smoking a pipe is a sharp-tongued, optimistic and nonchalant middle-aged man. Next to him was a tracker with sly eyes and experience as a sailor.

If the first four people are grouped together, then the second group of four people is centered on the boy in red. The tracker on his right is suffering from lung disease. He raises his sleeves to wipe sweat and barely contributes to the team. To the left of Larika is an elderly man taking out a cigarette pack. He has become accustomed to the life of a tracker and is already a "senior" elder in the team. Although only half of the middle-aged man's face covered by Larika was exposed, it could be seen that he was a worker who had worked in an open-air factory.

Of the three people in the last group, two of them were each thinking about their own thoughts. The tracker with a high nose and black curly hair in the middle looked back and looked into the distance. He had a typical Arminian face shape. Maybe he heard the shouts from the foreman on the ship and turned back with an angry look.

Although the characters in Repin's works are lower-class workers, each image in the picture has its own brilliance, and they form a rich and connotative team. Repin cleverly used the topography of the beach and the turns of the river to create a raised yellow base. The characters in the painting are like a group of carved figures, standing on this natural base. The open Volga River stretches as far as the eye can see, and the small flag on the mast in the distance flutters to the right, hinting at the hardships of the trackers traveling against the wind. Due to Repin's ingenuity in layout, this small picture has a grand and majestic effect.

In 1873, "Trackers on the Volga" participated in the exhibition at the Vienna International Exposition that year. Foreign newspaper reviews gave Repin enthusiastic affirmation. German and French artists believed that it was a miracle of Russian painting to paint civilian images so touchingly. Insightful people in the Russian literary and artistic circles saw the creative achievements of Russian critical realism in this painting, and at the same time they also met Repin's future achievements.