This is a portrait of the artist’s daughter V. I. Repina. Living in the 1890s at the Zdravnevo estate in Belarus, Repin was especially keen on open-air painting on location. Landscape plays a big role in his paintings and portraits of this period.
On the portrait of V. I. Repina, known as the “Autumn Bouquet”, Repin reported: “Now I started writing from Vera; in the middle of the garden with a large bouquet of coarse autumn flowers, with a thin elegant buttonhole; “.
The portrait was written from the very beginning as a genre-landscape image. It was based on the desire to transfer people in connection with nature. The landscape of the autumn day with its peace and together with a state invigorating the soul, with cold transparency of air and lighting, underlines that fullness of “life, youth and bliss”, which are expressed in the girl’s face and figure.
This connection with the landscape is well conveyed by the painting itself, the unity and harmony of its overall color, dominated by red, brown and sluggish green colors of the autumn landscape. They are concentrated, as it were, in the costume of a girl, in her brown sweater and strong spot of a red-brown beret.
A bouquet of flowers in the hands of the girl enhances the connection of the figure with the landscape; the figure to a certain extent enters the interior of the landscape, remaining at the same time in a foreground portrait. This bouquet in the picturesque relation connects the strong color spots of the jacket and beret with the softness of the colors of the autumn landscape.
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