Portrait of Alexander Borodin

Ilya Repin's 'Portrait of Alexander Borodin' (1888) depicts the composer-chemist who was one of the most distinctive figures of the Russian musical world — Borodin was a professional chemistry professor who composed in his spare time, yet produced works including the opera 'Prince Igor' and the 'Polovtsian Dances' that became central to the Russian nationalist musical canon. Repin's portrait of Borodin, created the year of the composer's death, is among the most significant of his musical portraits — capturing the intellectual character of a man who lived simultaneously in the worlds of science and art.

Repin renders Borodin with the psychological penetration that characterized his best portraits — the composer-scientist's intellectual presence conveyed through the quality of the gaze and the modeling of the features. His technique adapted the directness of his social realist work to the demands of individual portraiture, the specific character of each subject captured with the same observation he brought to collective social scenes. His warm palette and confident brushwork give the portrait its authority.