Repin was the leading artist in the Russian Realist movement in the late 19th century. He was born in the Ukraine, and started as an icon painter. From 1864 to 1873 he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in St Petersburg. From 1873 to 1876 he was in Paris, where he was influenced by Delacroix and plein-air painting. In 1878 he joined the Wanderers (Peredvizhniki), a group of artists concerned with the realistic depiction of Russian life and history. He painted genre and historical subjects, and portraits of leading figures of the time.
Valentin Alexandrovich Serov (Russian: Валенти́н Алекса́ндрович Серо́в; 19 January 1865 – 5 December 1911) was a Russian painter, and one of the premier portrait artists of his era.
Serov was born in Saint Petersburg, son of the Russian composer and music critic Alexander Serov, and his wife and former student Valentina Serova also a composer in her own right. Raised in a highly artistic milieu he was encouraged to pursue his talents by his parents and in his childhood he studied in Paris and Moscow under Ilya Repin and in the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts (1880–1885) under Pavel… more