Many great artists have fallen in love with extraordinary women and their love story is often no less interesting than creativity. And this is not surprising, only people who have known life in all its diversity, who have experienced the joy of love and the bitterness of parting, who have gone through fire, water and copper pipes, as Ilya Repin was at the moment of meeting Natalia Nordman, could write truly great paintings.
Ilya Repin. Self-Portrait
True, at first it was very peculiar. Then Nordman came to Repin's studio with her friend, Princess Tenisheva. Princess and Repin had long known each other, and treated with mutual sympathy, he often painted her portraits, and Tenisheva rarely came just for fun - could bring a huge bouquet of roses or several boxes of her dresses - let Ilya Efimovich choose the right one, which is better suited to the color in her portrait. Repin did not pay attention to Tenisheva's eccentricities, therefore, and to the arrival of his friend was indifferent. But noticing that she is frankly bored, gave a book of poems by his favorite poet Konstantin Fofanov. Nordman turned away from the artist and began to declare in a mocking and mocking tone, bringing Repin out of himself. He hurriedly bid farewell to the ladies and said to Tenisheva: "and this one here, never bring her again".
Portrait of Princess Tenisheva.
But love is a strange thing. A year later Repin, so disliked Nordman at the first meeting, bought for her a plot of land on the shore of the Gulf of Finland and decided to build a mansion there, a real family nest, called Penaty. Many prominent artists and writers came there, had long and interesting conversations about creativity, and all of them inevitably attracted the personality of Ilya Repin and irritated Natalia Nordman. Repin did not notice any of this, he was happy, and even though he is already 55 years old, and Nordman his younger by almost 20. The gray in the beard - a devil in the rib, it is too early to write him off, he is a man of anything, and let others envy.
Self-portrait with Natalia Borisovna Nordman
Perhaps Repin was just interested in Nordman, he did not need a sultry young lady, and also tired of loneliness - with his first wife, he had long since separated, and the artist Elizabeth Zvantseva to attempts to start a relationship with her remained deaf. Even the status of one of the leading artists of Russia did not help. And Nordman did not have such prejudices about the age difference, characterized by a strong nature and was a woman versatile, educated and intelligent. For example, knew six languages, seriously interested in photography and even won prizes at all sorts of exhibitions of photographers, composed novels - Repin contributed to the publication of her "Fugitive", where Nordman described her life.
Portrait of Natalia Nordman
How she smugly left her admiral father in America and lived the life of a simple farm laborer - milking cows, tending plants, and then getting a job as a governess and maid. Perhaps that's why she acquired views that angered the conservative upper classes. Nordman, shook hands with the servants, dined with them, and young girls taught to draw up a marriage contract, where for the birth of each child, the husband had to pay 1 thousand rubles, if he had the opportunity.
These views were close to Repin - he also sincerely sympathized with the common people, otherwise he would not have painted his best paintings, and domostroevsky patriarchy was alien to him.
Burlaki on the Volga
And Repin also liked to write portraits of his beloved - there were a lot of them, some very frivolous, clearly intended not for wide display, and for intimate relations. But what is it for Repin to quickly write a sketch of his sleeping beloved and present it to her.
The sleeping wife of artist Natalia Nordman.
Except that the rest of society was against Natalia Nordman. Too egregious and provocative, openly cynical, and at the end of their long relationship high ideals gave way to anecdotal enthusiasm for vegetarianism - "Repin ate hay" and shaking hands with servants. Repin was bored in Penaty, the world too narrowed, and irrepressible activity Nordman tired and him. In the end, their parting was inevitable, but Nordman still managed to give 15 happy years Repin, and this is worth a lot.
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