Il'ya Repin
, Russian, 1844-1930
Title
Portrait of Elena Annenkova (b.1877)Date1916
MediumBlack chalk and watercolour with white highlights on paper
Dimensions
73 x 49 cm
Signedlower right: Ilya Repin 1916
Credit LinePresented, Sir Alfred Chester Beatty, 1951
Object numberNGI.3295
DescriptionThe dancer Elena Annenkova (née Galperi) performed at The Halt of Comedians in St. Petersburg and The Bat in Moscow, intimate theatres frequented by the bourgeois intelligentsia. Her husband, the avant-garde artist Yury Annenkov (1889-1974), painted her in modernist work Portrait of the Dancer, 1917 (State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg). In the 1900s, the famous Realist painter Repin was a neighbour of the Annenkovs in the St. Petersburg suburb of Kuokkala. In this majestic portrait Repin presents Annenkova dramatically posed in elegant dress.