The picture did not expect what feelings it evokes. So what picture did Repin paint: “They sailed” or “They didn’t wait”? What do we see in the picture

“Repin’s painting “We Didn’t Expect”” - this expression has long become a meme.“Around the World” figured out who and what the characters, the author and the owner of the film were not really expecting.

Painting “We Didn’t Expect”
Canvas, oil. 160.5 x 167.5 cm
Years of creation: 1884–1888
Now kept in the State Tretyakov Gallery

One of the main surprises went to philanthropist Pavel Tretyakov. He bought a critically acclaimed painting for 7,000 rubles famous artist, visitors to the Tretyakov Gallery were eagerly awaiting her arrival from the XII exhibition of the Itinerants. The audience was also attracted by the topical plot: a political officer, released ahead of schedule, does not have time to warn his family about his release and stuns them with his appearance. In the early 1880s, populists convicted in the 1870s were released under an amnesty.

For two years the painting hung peacefully in the Tretyakov Gallery, but in 1887 a scandal broke out. When Tretyakov was away in Moscow, Repin visited the gallery with a box of paints and quickly copied the head of the person entering. The hero of the canvas, according to eyewitnesses, began to look younger, but the pride of a convinced revolutionary in his features was replaced by lack of will and confusion. Having seen the picture, Tretyakov was furious at Repin’s arbitrariness and, in addition, decided that it had been corrected poorly. I thought about dismissing the servants who looked after the gallery, who did not expect his anger: it never occurred to them to interfere with the artist, a longtime friend and adviser to the owner of the gallery.

And Repin was surprised by Tretyakov’s indignation, but when he next year I sent the picture for correction and finalized it. The result satisfied both of them. “This third exile is more of a wonderful, glorious Russian intellectual than a revolutionary,” wrote the classic art critic Igor Grabar. “The picture began to sing,” a satisfied Repin finally concluded.

1. Former prisoner. The historian Igor Erokhov determined that among the populists in the early 1880s, under the Tsar’s pardon, it was not a revolutionary who could be released early, but a sympathizer, from those who were present at the gatherings, but did not participate in the actions: serious conspirators of that period, if they were amnestied, were not before 1896. The hero could be convicted under Article 318 of the Code of Punishments for membership in a prohibited circle (punishable by imprisonment in a fortress, exile or hard labor). Repin's model was his friend, writer Vsevolod Garshin. Suffering from depression, Garshin committed suicide the year the picture was completed, in 1888.

2. Armyak. The hero’s peasant clothing, writes Erokhov, means that the man was serving his sentence in correctional prison companies far from home: those sent to the prison were not taken with the clothes in which they were taken, and upon release they were given rags purchased with donations from the Prison Trustee Society.

3. Old woman. The hero's mother, whom Repin wrote from his mother-in-law, Evgenia Shevtsova. “The one who enters,” writes art critic Tatyana Yudenkova, “sees only what the viewer does not see: the eyes of the mother.”

4. Lady. The hero's wife. Repin wrote it based on his wife Vera and the niece of the critic Stasov Varvara. Both mother and wife are in mourning - a sign that someone in the family has died recently, within a year.

5. Maid. The girl reluctantly lets a poorly dressed man into the room, not recognizing him as the head of the family: apparently, she was hired after his arrest.

6. Boy. The hero's son, a boy in a high school student's uniform, recognized his father as he entered and was delighted. Repin painted a boy from Seryozha Kostychev, the son of neighbors in the country, a future academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, who studied plant respiration.

7. Girl. The hero's daughter, on the contrary, is frightened: she was probably too young when her father was arrested to remember him. Repin posed for him eldest daughter Faith.

8. Furniture.“The decor is sparse, country-style,” noted art critic Lazar Rosenthal. The artist painted the interior from the furnishings of a house in Martyshkino, which the Repins rented as a dacha, like many St. Petersburg families who settled for the summer outside the city near the Gulf of Finland.

9. Photography. It shows Alexander II, killed in 1881 by the Narodnaya Volya member Grinevitsky, in a coffin. Photography is a sign of the times, indicating the politicization of the plot of the picture. The assassination of the Tsar was a milestone for the populist movement: contrary to the hopes of the revolutionaries, the removal of the monarch did not cause progressive changes in Russian Empire. The 1880s became a time of reflection, when many became disillusioned with terror as a method and with society's readiness for change.

10. Portraits of Nikolai Nekrasov And Taras Shevchenko, writers and publicists whom the populists considered ideological inspirers - a sign that members of the exile’s family shared his beliefs.

11. “On Calvary” by Carl Steuben- a very popular reproduction and at the same time a hint of the suffering that the hero had to endure, and a kind of resurrection of him for his family after several years of imprisonment.

Artist
Ilya Repin

1844 - Born into the family of a military villager in the Kharkov province in Ukraine.
1864–1871 - Studied at the Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg.
1870–1873 - I painted a picture.
1872 - Married Vera Shevtsova, the daughter of an architect. The marriage produced three daughters and a son.
1874 - Started exhibiting with the Association of Traveling People art exhibitions.
1876 - Wrote “Under escort. Along a dirty road,” the first painting on a revolutionary historical theme.
1880–1889, 1892 - Worked on the second, most known option painting “The Arrest of the Propagandist.”
1887 - Divorced from my wife.
1899 - I bought an estate, which I named “Penates”, and moved in with Natalia Nordman, a suffragette and writer (pseudonym - Severova).
1907–1911 - Worked on the painting “Manifestation of October 17, 1905.”
1930 - Died in “Penates” (then the estate was in Finland, now in Russia).

Painting by Russian artist Ilya Repin “They Didn’t Expect”, painted in 1884-1888. It is part of the collection of the State Tretyakov Gallery (inv. 740). The size of the painting is 160.5 x 167.5 cm.

I. E. Repin was one of the greatest Russian artists. His work has become a valuable contribution of Russian art to the world artistic development. Deeply folk, closely connected with the progressive ideas of his era, Repin's work is one of the pinnacles of Russian realistic art. Repin's painting "They Didn't Expect" has two versions. In the first version of “We Didn’t Expect,” a girl returned to the family and was greeted by two sisters. The painting was small. Following her in 1884, Repin began another version, which became the main one. The painting was painted quickly and was exhibited at traveling exhibition. But then Repin refined it, changing mainly the expression on the face of the person entering and partly the expression on the faces of his mother and wife. The second version became the most significant and monumental of Repin’s paintings on revolutionary themes.
In the painting “They Didn’t Expect” Repin found a plot that allowed him to create a canvas of great ideological content, revealing his talent as a genre painter and his mastery of psychological characterization.
Before us is an image of a typical intelligent family in her usual environment. Heroic revolutionary themes in Repin's painting "We Didn't Expect" appears in its primary form genre painting modern life. Thanks to this myself genre painting And modern life elevated to rank historical painting. The internal theme of the film “We Didn’t Expect” was the problem of relations between the public and the personal. The main task of the film was to convincingly show the unexpectedness of the revolutionary’s return, the variety of experiences of himself and his family members. In the film, Repin’s talent for expressive characteristics unfolded with all his might. Each of the characters is outlined and presented with exceptional strength and prominence, up to such minor characters like a servant at the door or a little girl at the table. Not only the facial expressions are remarkable, but also the poses themselves. characters, plasticity of their bodies. Particularly indicative in this regard is the figure of the old woman’s mother who rose to meet the incoming man. The dark figure of the one who returned in a brown overcoat and large trampled on the open spaces long roads boots brings into the family interior something from Siberia and hard labor, and with it, pushing apart the walls of the house, here, into the family where they are playing the piano and the children are preparing their lessons, as if the enormity of history, the harsh cruelty of the life and trials of a revolutionary, is entering. Repin builds the composition like a scene captured on the fly. The actions of all the characters are depicted at the very beginning: the revolutionary takes his first steps, the old woman just got up and wants to move towards him, the wife just turned around, the boy raised his head. Everyone is caught unexpectedly, their experiences are still vague and uncertain. This is the first step of meeting, recognition, when you still don’t believe your eyes, you still don’t fully realize what you saw. Another moment - and the meeting will take place, people will rush into each other's arms, there will be crying and laughter, kisses and exclamations. Repin keeps the audience in constant suspense. Thanks to this, the solution is not immediately given ready-made, but is thought out by the viewer himself. Repin remarkably managed to combine in the film the important with the secondary, the significant with those little things that give the scene vitality and introduce lyrical warmth. Such, for example, is the image of a girl sitting at a table with her crooked legs dangling above the floor, the entire interior painted with love, such is the soft, gentle light -summer day, pouring through the half-opened balcony door, on the glass of which drops of recently passed rain are still visible. The details of the setting have a plot-explanatory meaning. Thus, it is not for nothing that portraits of Shevchenko and Nekrasov, so common in this setting, are depicted above the piano, and between them is an engraving from Steiben’s then popular painting “Calvary.” The analogy with the Gospel legend of suffering and sacrifice was very common among the revolutionary intelligentsia. Repin's painting "We Didn't Expect" is an outstanding painting by Repin in terms of the beauty and skill of its pictorial solution. It was painted in the open air, full of light and air, its light coloring gives it a softening drama and soft and bright lyricism.

Russian reality, its “poetic truth,” as Ilya Repin wrote in a letter to Polenov, captivated this great painter so powerfully that today we can study Russian history from his paintings.

The beginning of the way

The artist was born in the small Ukrainian town of Chuguev in 1844. The family lived poorly and difficultly. Repin showed his extraordinary gift in childhood, when he made toy horses from wax and paper. Displayed on the windowsill, these creations attracted a crowd of admiring fans. Little Ilya took up painting after a relative gave the boy a box of watercolor paints for Christmas.

At the local school of military topographers, where Repin studied from the age of thirteen, he enthusiastically draws portraits of his classmates and teachers. Two years later the school is closed, and Ilya Repin becomes an apprentice to the Chuguev icon painter. The young man’s brilliant talent finds recognition far beyond the city. Then Repin decided to go to St. Petersburg and enter the Academy of Arts. Having saved money, the young man sets off on his journey.

In Petersburg

In the fall of 1863, the young man became a student at the drawing school of the Society for the Encouragement of Artists. In 1864, when Repin was 20 years old, the aspiring painter was among the volunteer students. His unique abilities and hard work helped him become one of the most successful students of the Academy, and considering that he was forced, in addition to studying, to earn his living, we We will see before us an unusually persistent and talented person.

Brilliant debut

Repin's diploma work was a painting on Gospel story: "The Resurrection of Jairus' Daughter." In the center of the image is anxiety and tension condensed in a gloomy room. While working on the canvas, Repin recalled the tragic events in his own family, when his beloved sister Ustya died. What sorrow and hopelessness reigned in the house then! In the picture, Christ approached the deceased and took her hand. The candles burn brightly at her head; this brightened spot becomes the semantic center of the picture. The other inhabitants of the house are plunged into darkness, the night full of pain and grief is ending. Another moment - and the miracle of resurrection will happen. This painting is marked by the greatest emotional intensity young artist(see photo).

“We Didn’t Expect” - another full of psychologism and drama painting. Repin would write it much later, seventeen years later. The path to it lies through a deep understanding of reality, which unusually excites the artist’s heart and, in his words, “asks to be put on canvas” itself.

Passion for truth

The sensitive heart of Ilya Efimovich could not help but respond to the contrasts that are commonly called social. While traveling along the Volga, the “master of truth” was deeply struck by the disharmony between the sight of an idle, contented crowd of walking onlookers and exhausted barge haulers pulling a huge barge along the river. This is how the sensational painting “Barge Haulers on the Volga” was born. The master focuses on the expressions on the faces of these people who will not tolerate it; anger and rebellion are hidden in their eyes.

It is not surprising that Repin became one of the leading participants in the Association of Traveling Art Exhibitions, within whose bosom the painting “We Didn’t Expect” was created. Repin's painting bears the features of democracy that the Wanderers defended.

The revolutionary sentiments that were fermenting in Repin’s contemporary society worried and interested the artist. A number of his paintings are dedicated to Russian revolutionary movement. The paintings “On a Dirty Road”, “Arrest of a Propagandist”, “Refusal of Confession” present us with images of rebels who passionately believe in their idea, but did not find a wide response among the people. Such is the canvas “We Didn’t Expect.” Repin's painting, the plot of which is based on the return of a revolutionary home after a long exile or imprisonment, is considered one of the most started to be painted in 1884, and finished four years later. At first, Repin conceived of the exile as a sacrificial and courageous man, but, true to the truth, he portrayed him without embellishment.

Repin's painting "We Didn't Expect" Description

A poignant and dramatic scene from life appears on the canvas in front of us: the prisoner hesitantly and nervously enters the room where his relatives are. The author pays main attention to the experience that each character experiences at this moment. They really weren't expecting the newcomer. Repin's painting conveys unusually expressively in faces, gestures, emotional movements heroes. The action occurs behind the door, which opened a moment ago, and continues in front of us. On background we see the frightened face of either a servant or a hanger-on; a maid is standing in the doorway, her posture and eyes express wariness. An elderly woman, probably his mother, stood up from her chair to meet the newcomer. We almost physically feel how greedily she peers at her son, how her hand trembles. At the table, bending over the tablecloth, a little girl, the prisoner’s daughter, who may have never seen him, looks at the guest with frightened eyes. To her right is the enthusiastic face of her high school student son; he knows his father, perhaps from his mother’s stories, or his image lived in childhood memory boy. From the piano he turns to to a thin person in trampled boots and a shabby coat, a young woman, a wife. Her eyes sparkle with amazement and joy. Each character has its own story, and this whole scene is the beginning new history, which will have its own worries, sorrows, and rejoicings. And we understand that that fear and anxiety, the stamp of suffering and deprivation that was imprinted on the face of the head of the family who returned home - everything will calm down and smooth out in the gentle rays of love from loved ones. How brilliantly the artist captured this feature, when relatives live with the thought of returning dear person, although at this particular moment he was not expected! Repin's painting in this sense is a masterpiece of psychologism.

Ilya Repin. We didn’t expect it, 1884-1888. State Tretyakov Gallery

We have all been familiar with Repin’s painting “They Didn’t Expect” for a long time from school textbooks. But few people know that there were two versions of this painting, that the artist worked a lot on the portrait of the main character, redoing it several times.

The first version of the painting, dating back to 1883, was begun by Repin at his dacha in Martyshkino, near St. Petersburg. The rooms of this dacha are depicted in the picture. In the first version, a girl returned to the family, and she was met by a woman and two other girls, presumably sisters.

Following this picture, Repin in 1884 began another version, which was to become the main one.
The second version became the most significant and monumental of Repin’s paintings on revolutionary themes. The artist and executed it in much large sizes, modified the characters and increased their number. The girl entering was replaced by a revolutionary who had returned from exile; the woman rising from her chair in the foreground was replaced by an old mother; instead of one girl, a boy and a little girl were depicted at the table.

The internal theme of the picture was the problem of the relationship between public and personal, family duty. It was resolved in the plot of the revolutionary’s unexpected return to his family, which remained lonely without him, as an expectation of how this return would be perceived, whether the revolutionary would be justified by his family.

This problem of justifying the revolutionary by his family was, in essence, the problem of justifying and blessing the revolutionary feat, which Repin gave in the film in the only form possible under censorship conditions.

Repin builds the composition as a scene captured on the fly. The actions of all the characters are depicted at the very beginning: the revolutionary takes his first steps, the old woman just got up and wants to move towards him, the wife just turned around, the boy raised his head.

Not only the facial expressions are remarkable, but also the very poses of the characters and the plasticity of their bodies. Particularly indicative in this regard is the figure of the old woman’s mother who rose to meet the incoming man. Her bent figure conveys the deep shock of what is happening.

She is so expressive that Repin could afford to almost not show her face, giving it in such a turn that his expression is not visible. The hands of the old woman and the young woman at the piano are beautiful, characterized surprisingly individually.

Everyone is caught unexpectedly, their experiences are still vague and uncertain. This is the first moment of meeting, recognition, when you still don’t believe your eyes, you still don’t fully realize what you saw. Another moment - and the meeting will take place, people will rush into each other's arms, there will be crying and laughter, kisses and exclamations. Repin keeps the audience in constant suspense.

The image of the main character changed from complete confidence in the chosen path to deep doubts. According to the memoirs of contemporaries, in the 1884 version, the exile entered the house as a decisive, courageous person. IN final version, for which the writer V.M. posed. Garshin, in the picture there is a man timidly entering the house.

It’s as if he is looking with his eyes for the answer to the question: have I been forgiven? someone is waiting for me? Am I right to risk the well-being of my family? By focusing on the figures of the exile and his mother, the artist achieves psychological truth in characterizing the reactions of all the characters depicted: the indifference of the new maid, who does not know who it is, the girl’s fear and the boy’s joy.

The dark figure of the returnee, in a brown overcoat and large boots trampled on the expanses of long roads, brings into the family interior something of Siberia and hard labor, and with it, pushing apart the walls of the house, here, into the family where they play the piano and the children are preparing their homework, as if entering the vastness of history, the harsh cruelty of the life and trials of a revolutionary.

It is interesting that all changes in the composition, the removal of figures, as well as the reworking of facial expressions, were made by Repin directly on the canvas itself. The picture was thus arranged as if it were a theatrical mise-en-scène. Repin painted the first version of the painting directly from life, in his dacha, placing his relatives and friends in the room as characters.

They also served as models for big picture: the wife of the returnee is based on the artist’s wife and V.D. Stasova, the old woman’s mother is based on her mother-in-law, Shevtsova, the girl at the table is based on Vera Repina, the boy is based on S. Kostychev, the maid at the door is based on the Repins’ servants. Big picture, probably, was also started in Martyshkin to some extent from life. Continuing to work on it in St. Petersburg, Repin composes and writes it, as if having a full-scale scene before his eyes, a method that he also used in “Cossacks.”

The canvas “They Didn’t Expect” is an outstanding painting by Repin in terms of the beauty and skill of its pictorial solution. It was painted in the open air, full of light and air, its light coloring gives it a softening drama and soft and bright lyricism.
Repin saw the execution of Narodnaya Volya, but decided to tell about these people not in a bloody plot, but through an individual hero to reveal the drama of an entire generation, the beginning of which was in the Narodnik movement at the turn of the 1860s–1870s.

Therefore, the artist decides such a significant social issue according to the laws everyday genre, describing in detail the furnishings of the house of the various intelligentsia, where on the wall hang a photograph of Alexander II on his deathbed, portraits of poets N.A. Nekrasov and T.G. Shevchenko. At the same time, the composition of the film is built according to the laws of the climactic frame of a film, which is the key to understanding the entire film.

“The painting appeared at the exhibition shortly after the amnesty was granted to exiled Narodnaya Volya members. In the context of such reminders of the “rebellions and executions” that darkened the “beginning of days” of the reigning monarch, the appearance of an exile within the walls home gets the character of the unexpected miraculous phenomenon from the threshold of non-existence, in other words - resurrection.
Ernst Sapritsky "DON'T WAIT"

It must have been Sunday
The mother taught the children homework.
Suddenly the door swung open
And the bright-eyed wanderer enters.

Didn't you wait? Everyone is amazed
It was as if the air had been stirred up.
It’s not a hero who came from the war,
The convict returned home.

He's all anxiously tense,
He froze hesitantly:
Will he be forgiven by his wife?
Caused her a lot of grief
His arrest, then prison...
Oh, how she has aged.

But everything is illuminated by the sun.
Not yet evening. There will be happiness.
A fine day looks out the window.
God will seal the entry in the Book of Fates.

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Reviews

This work, in any chance encounter with it (in albums, in magazines, on the Internet), invariably made me try to unravel the mystery of the plot... What you wrote about its contents, dear Alina, somewhat lifted the veil of the plot.
And I thought this - a certain convicted or escaped convict returns home, maybe not even quite officially - and the family’s reaction is very ambiguous! The wife is completely confused, there is not a drop of joy on her face, she has apparently come to terms with his absence, perhaps even planned a new relationship, dreams that this moment instantly collapse, and from her look and hectic pose one can understand that she does not want to believe in the return of the rejected past... The boy, with his childish spontaneity and ability only in childhood to enjoy everything, especially in in this case, possibilities for good reason to interrupt a boring lesson with her grandmother - she is immensely happy, essentially, without even understanding the reason, and without even knowing who this exhausted person is... The girl, being older, and already understanding something, - from under her brows and with anxiety, dissatisfied, even with with some disgust, he looks at the ragged wanderer; She just might remember who it is, but - being somewhat aware of her mother’s plans for changing family and material events - she is not happy about their destruction... Well, the maid, one feels, generally feels like the mistress of the kitchen and the door in this house , with women and children depending on many circumstances... Her indignant and businesslike pose and expression indicate that she is ready at any moment to correct the situation and drive this impostor out of the house... And only what is in the center of the picture evokes the strongest perception - the face of the exhausted wanderer is completely turned to his mother - the only hope and support in unbearable living conditions; on his face - only eyes, and in them the cry of the soul - remember, love, forgive, shelter?!.. Apparently, he understands that only one heart is needed here... And his mother - her clothes are sad, she did not forget about the bitter fate of his son; perhaps she even resigned herself to separation forever... and the fact that she hastily jumped up from the chair, holding onto the table, trying to maintain balance from an excess of feelings, and her impulse to rush to her son (although her face is not visible, one can imagine how much there is in him and suffering, and amazement, and joy from the surprise of the meeting) - all this suggests that really - exclusively everyone “Didn’t Expect”, in this first moment of the meeting - had not yet had time to put on the masks appropriate for the occasion, and brightly, openly express feelings hearts that the Master of the Brush conveyed in such a talented and incomparable form.
Sorry, dear Alina, for such a lengthy interpretation of this plot - perhaps I am mistaken in the interpretation of the characters in the picture, but I saw it in such an explanation. Thank you very much! Best regards - Larisa.

Alina, thank you so much for such a flattering review addressed to me! I am just a caring contemplator, and since my husband is an artist, and also teaches painting at a university, I am somewhat partial to this area of ​​​​knowledge... I even advised my husband to tell the students the address of your page - such a wealth of information , presented in a concise, and at the same time, comprehensive, high-quality form... Truly, whoever has the talent of an art critic with a broad, lively and beautiful language and outlook - this is you, this is without any exaggeration. I would like to wish you from the bottom of my heart strength, health, joyful creative mood, new inspired discoveries - so that through your extraordinary talent as a storyteller, analyst, collector - your readers can learn more about the treasures of the world, which, due to our technically-minded age, are somehow lost in the bustle of days... Thanks to your works (and this, of course - the difficult torment of creativity - emotional, mental and physical, including), thanks to your painstaking diligence - these treasures emerge from oblivion to universal admiration... It is with this feeling and with great gratitude that I become acquainted with your works.
We have a large library at home with albums of works by artists. different countries and eras, in different quality and description. Believe me, albums with your articles and high-quality reproductions would take the most honorable place in this library. And for students, for example, it’s not easy to read, in modern high-speed conditions, multi-volume descriptions of what concerns art... Most often, they don’t read anything at all, unfortunately... But such essays, concentrated information, and - not dry, indifferent, as is usually the case - but lively, written with love for the author, for his works, for the subject of study - this would be extremely useful for learning, for the formation of a future creative personality. This admiration and reverence for the beautiful - it cannot leave anyone indifferent, this is also noticeable in your reviewers.
Good luck to you, accept the most best regards and sincere gratitude!
Best regards - Larisa.

The painting belongs to Ilya REPIN’s “People’s Will” series, which also includes the paintings “The Arrest of the Propagandist” (188-1889, 1892, Tretyakov Gallery), “Before Confession” (“Refusal of Confession”, 1879-1885, Tretyakov Gallery), “Gathering” (1883, Tretyakov Gallery) and others. The moment depicted in the painting shows the first reaction of family members to the return of a convicted person from exile.

Repin began working on the painting in the early 1880s, being impressed by the murder of Emperor ALEXANDER II, committed on March 1 (13), 1881, as well as by the public execution of Narodnaya Volya, which took place on April 3 (15), 1881, and at which he himself was present.

The wife of the returning man was painted from Repin's wife Vera Alekseevna, the mother from the artist's mother-in-law Evgenia Dmitrievna SHEVTSOVA, the boy from Sergei KOSTYCHEV, the son of neighbors in the dacha (in the future - a famous biochemist, professor and academician; 1877-1931), the girl from her daughter Vera, and the maid is from the Repins' servants. It is assumed that the face of the entering man could be painted from Vsevolod Mikhailovich GARSHINA (1855-1888).

The interior of the apartment is decorated with reproductions, which are important for assessing the political mood in the family and the symbolism of the painting. These are portraits of democratic writers Nikolai NEKRASOV and Taras SHEVCHENKO, an image of Emperor ALEXANDER II, killed by Narodnaya Volya, on his deathbed, as well as an engraving from Karl STEUBEN’s painting “Calvary,” which was popular at that time. Analogies with gospel history about suffering and self-sacrifice for people were very common among the revolutionary intelligentsia.

Portrait of Taras Grigorievich SHEVCHENKO (1814-1861). 1858 Photographer DENIER Andrey Ivanovich (1820-1892).
Portrait of Nikolai Alekseevich NEKRASOV (1821-1877). 1870-1877 Photographer Jacob Johann Wilhelm WEZENBERG (1839-1880).

STEUBEN Karl Karlovich (1788-1856) “On Golgotha.” 1841
Canvas, oil. 193 x 168 cm.
State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

MAKOVSKY Konstantin Egorovich (1839-1915) “Portrait of Alexander II on his deathbed.” 1881
Canvas, oil. 61 x 85 cm.
State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

Among all the articles about the painting, I liked this one (presented with minor changes).

Ilya Repin’s painting “We Didn’t Expect” is well known. A shabby man enters the room, not expected by the members of his family who are in it. This is a Narodnaya Volya member who returned from Siberian hard labor. The sufferer's mother, wife and two children express their emotions, forming a picturesque group. Women in black - someone died while the poor guy was in prison (his father?).

Wait! Why didn’t they “wait”? Have they forgotten when the poor guy's sentence ends? Well, okay, he was released somehow suddenly, but why didn’t he send a telegram to his family then? How and why did the artist’s return home from prison, a planned event by default, turn out to be associated with surprise? Let's try to figure it out.

First, we need to explain what the criminal correctional punishments existing at that time consisted of. Courts could sentence convicts to various types imprisonment: arrest (from 1 day to 3 months), imprisonment in a straight house (from 2 months to 2 years), imprisonment in a fortress (from 1 to 16 months), imprisonment (from 2 to 16 months), work in correctional facilities prison companies (from 1 year to 4 years), hard labor (from 4 years to indefinite), exile to settlement (indefinite) and exile to housing (indefinite, could be accompanied by imprisonment from 1 to 4 years). In addition, there was administrative exile (up to 5 years) - a punishment imposed out of court.

It is very unlikely that the character in the picture was exiled to settle or live in Siberia or was in administrative exile. The explanation here is simple: he is dressed very poorly. Exiles and settlers lived in their own or rented housing, through their labors and at their own expense, they freely had money and could receive remittances. The prisoners in the fortress (in fact, it was not a fortress, but a department in the prison) also sat in their own clothes. It's hard to imagine that a family renting for the summer Vacation home who has a servant, plays the piano, etc., would not send the repressed person money to allow him to dress more decently.

Consequently, the character in the picture was imprisoned. The prisoners were dressed in standard prison clothes, and upon release they were given what they were arrested in (applies only to the prison in the city of arrest, clothes were not sent to other cities), clothes were bought for them at their expense, and if the person being released did not have any money, no clothes - the Prison Trustee Committee bought them clothes with donated amounts. One must think that these were second-hand clothes of ordinary townspeople, bought from a junk dealer - exactly what the hero of the picture was wearing.

Why then did not a more or less wealthy family send money to the prisoner? The answer is simple: there was no kiosk in the prison where they sold food, the number of things that a prisoner was allowed to keep was limited (cup, comb, spoon, etc.), so it was impossible to spend money. They would simply lie uselessly in the custody of the warden. Of course, upon release, the prisoners were sent money so that they could use it to get home - but for some reason our character was released suddenly.

So, the hero of the picture was either in a correctional prison not in his province - there were fewer correctional prisons than provincial prisons, or he was in hard labor in Siberia. What is more plausible - we will figure it out further.

How come the prisoner was released suddenly? There is only one possible answer: pardon. Parole did not exist until 1909, and cases in the appellate and cassation instances were conducted with the participation of lawyers, and the decision was announced in their presence (the decision of the appellate instance is also mandatory for the convicted person). And only the Supreme Pardon (and it was sometimes given without a request from the convicted person) could go directly to the administration of the place of detention without notifying the lawyers and the prisoner about it.

Why didn’t the freed man send a telegram to his family? We see that the film takes place in a country house. There were still very few post offices outside county towns in that era. Delivery of letters and telegrams to your home (even in major cities) was not included in the basic tariff of postal services, letters (outside the capitals) were not delivered to home at all (unless the recipient entered into a special agreement), and a separate fee was charged for the delivery of telegrams by courier - about 10 kopecks per mile (that is, 1 modern dollar per km). If we assume that the country house is located 50 km from county town, then the telegram would cost 5-6 rubles, which the prisoner, judging by his ragged appearance, simply did not have. This is how the unexpected appearance was formed.

But if he has no money, how did he get from Siberia? The treasury did not reimburse travel expenses for prisoners released from prison. If you had money and the warden thought you were quiet enough, you could go home at your own expense. If not, you were sent home free of charge in a convoy, that is, with the same escort team that brought new prisoners to the prison. On foot ( railway had not yet been in Siberia), with an overnight stay in prison huts, and then from the Urals in a prison carriage, but not under escort, but together with the escort.

If our poor fellow came from Siberia himself, he would have spent 50-70 rubles on it anyway. Then it would be better for him to send an expensive telegram to his family, wait on the spot until they send him money by telegraph (this would take 3-4 days), and then go home in greater comfort, and not in rags. Thus, the hero of the picture either traveled from Siberia with a convoy only because no one lent him 5 rubles for a telegram (less likely), or he was sitting in the correctional department of a prison in European Russia, and after his release it was easier for him to get home quickly as is, than to wait for money to be sent (more likely).

Now let's move on to the fun part. What has he done? To begin with, it must be said that the picture does not give any hints about this. Maybe it's a middle manager who was jailed for embezzlement. The viewer had to guess for himself. The viewer of the 1880s guessed unanimously - this is a “politician”, that is, for that era - a member of the People’s Will.

If the hero of the picture was imprisoned for politics, in any case he was not a serious conspirator. People who actually participated in groups that committed terrorist attacks and were planning to kill the Tsar did not receive pardons in 1883 (the year the picture was created). All of them survived either until the amnesty of 1896 (coronation of NICHOLAS II), or until the amnesty of 1906 (opening State Duma), and some were not released at all. If the state released anyone in 1883 (and at that moment tsarism was still deeply afraid of the Narodnaya Volya), it was only those who accidentally fell under distribution, small fry - caught in relatively harmless political conversations or with illegal literature.

What exactly had to be done to get into the correctional prison companies? The most appropriate article of the Penal Code, 318th - “accomplices of illegal societies who were not among their founders, chiefs and main leaders” - provided for a very wide range of punishments, from 8 months in prison to 8 years in hard labor. It was under this article that many unfortunates fell who accidentally and once wandered into the meeting, which the investigators then considered to be a People's Will circle. The severity of court decisions changed, following political situation. At the dawn of the People's Will movement, for attending the reading of some revolutionary declaration one could get 4 years in prison. After the king was killed, this began to seem like trifles, and the most harmless of such convicts could begin to commute their sentences, forgiving the unserved part of their sentence. It was impossible to get into a correctional department for “literature” - distributors received from 6 to 8 years of hard labor, writers - from 8 to 16 months in prison, readers - from 7 days to 3 months of arrest.

So, the picture allows for a wide range of interpretations. But, in any case, it does not depict an inveterate revolutionary and courageous fighter. Rather, before us is a person who accidentally or to a small extent came into contact with the Narodnaya Volya movement, was sentenced for this to a medium-term (1-4 years) imprisonment and was pardoned by the tsar before the expiration of the term. Moreover, he was pardoned not because the Tsar is kind, but because it became clear that he was not really to blame.