person
Ilya Yefimovich Repin
Repin
also: Репина, Ilya Repin
Presumably the celebrated Russian realist painter Ilya Yefimovich Repin (1844-1930), watched by Chekhov alongside Anna Ivanovna Suvorina during the Petersburg premiere of "Ivanov" -- "During the performance I saw only two people: her and Repin" (§7). The identification is provisional: the letter itself gives no further identifying detail beyond the bare surname, and the reference cannot be fully secured from this letter alone. Distinct from the fictional "Repina" of a Suvorin story draft and from the title role of Suvorin's play "Tatyana Repina".
Reading notes
- To A. S. Suvorin, 4 February 1889. Moscow. §7 Repin
Presumably the painter Ilya Yefimovich Repin, though the letter gives no further identifying detail and the reference cannot be fully secured from this letter alone -- flagged here as a provisional identification, not a confirmed one.
- To M. P. Chekhova, 14 January 1890. Petersburg. §3 I was at Repin's studio
Ilya Yefimovich Repin, the celebrated Russian realist painter, whose Petersburg studio Chekhov visited during this same stretch of enforced idleness in the capital.
- To Ye. M. Shavrova, 8 March 1891. Moscow. §3 on Repin's account, allow me to take offense
An obscure, self-contained joke: Chekhov mock-protests the story's detail of feeding a writer suckling pig in hot weather, addressed to "Repin" as though on his behalf. The reference does not recur elsewhere in the corpus and cannot be further pinned down from this letter alone; treated here as the same Repin tentatively identified at, consistent with that entity's cautious, provisional identification.