Nikolai Gogol’s literary characters in the Ilya Repin’s graphic and pictorial works. To the question about morphological problem at the Russian artistic culture in the late XIX — beginning XX century

Abstract

This article is dedicated to the cultural heritage of two prominent Russian creative figures: Ilya Repin and Nikolai Gogol. The objective of this study is to show the artistic relationship between the aforementioned figures while drawing on their artistic oeuvre for examples. A comparative analysis of Gogol and Repin’s work has been carried out and a multitude of links between the artist and the great writer’s body of work have been researched. By analysing Repin’s paintings, graphics and theatrical works related to Gogol, the artist’s lesser known works have been studied and new aspects of his artistic life have been examined. The common subject matter of I. Repin and N. Gogol’s works indicate not only the influence of the tendentious ‘literary’ democratic line of 19th century Russian painting, but also the artists’ shared ideological and aesthetic roots, in particular Ukrainian folk epic poems, which are inherent to both their satiric talent and the unity of their philosophical-religious views. Refs 46. Figs 11.