A collection of 48 oil paintings and 44 sketches by Repin (1844-1930), one of the most renowned 19th-century artists in the Russian Empire, is on show at the National Museum of China.
Tatyana Yudenkova, deputy director of the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, said the exhibition would emphasise Repin’s “Russianness” through important periods of his life, from his early years at the Imperial Academy of Arts in St Petersburg to his later years on the Gulf of Finland in the early 1900s.
“The colour scheme of the [Beijing museum] halls is blue, green, dark beige. The classical columns, pediments and other elements of the order architecture of classicism will remind us of the academic period of study in St Petersburg,” Yudenkova told Russian newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta last month.
In January, the Ministry of Culture and Strategic Communications in Kyiv said the works of Repin – known as Illia Riepin or Ripyn in Ukraine – were part of its national cultural heritage.
