They did not Expect Him

Oil Painting Reproductions

Repin’s masterpiece of the revolutionary genre, They Did Not Expect Him, was exhibited at the 12th Peredvizhnik exhibition in 1884–85 in St. Petersburg and Moscow and immediately found itself at the centre of a fierce debate. To contemporaries it seemed clear that the fate of the returning exile, presumed to be a political prisoner, was linked to the assassination of Tsar Aleksandr II on 1st March, 1881. It was not accidental that the artist placed a photograph of the Tsar in his coffin on the right-hand wall, and on the wall behind the exile a large engraving of The Golgotha by Charles de Steuben and the portraits the poets Nikolai Nekrasov and Taras Shevchenko. The picture’s title heightens the sense of surprise at the exile’s unexpected return but also adds to the ambiguous sense of what is left unresolved by the painting. The main character remains enigmatic. Contemporaries wondered about his identity, his age and what emotions were supposedly conveyed as he enters the family room? Repin repainted the main character’s face three times between 1883–88 seeking to get this crucial aspect as he desired it, but without success. In the final version the returning exile looks out from the painting like a man broken by fate, slightly lost and hesitant, and most importantly with a palpable sense of vulnerability. In depicting this man who ‘was not expected so soon’ Repin raised the issue of seeking meaning and sense in the existence of a single human life. The hero’s predicament poses the perennial moral question – ‘what is to be done?’ He is not necessarily intent on saving the world or redeeming mankind, but is instead searching for an answer to the ethical question: how should I best live in order to understand life? There is no definitive solution to this, and the power and value of Repin’s painting resides in this unresolved dilemma, which for well over a hundred years has consistently fascinated and enthralled successive generations.