In the sun

In the Sun by Ilya Repin, dated around 1900 and held at the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, belongs to his late career exploration of figures in outdoor light — a departure from the grand historical and social realist canvases that had made him Russia's most celebrated painter. By 1900 Repin had relocated to Penaty, his estate near St. Petersburg, and the domestic outdoor subjects he painted there reflect a shift toward intimate observation. A figure in strong sunlight offered him a purely optical challenge: how to render the bleaching, flattening effect of direct sun on form and colour without losing the sense of solid three-dimensional presence.

Repin tackles the challenge of direct sunlight with robust, varied brushwork, using high-keyed tones and strong colour contrasts to suggest the way bright sun flattens form while intensifying colour. His handling in the sunlit passages is decisive and confident, the shadows cooled against the warm highlights.