This area is dedicated towards my ongoing work with translating Repin’s Autobiography. Please join below if you are interested in reading the first chapter and hearing about future chapters as they become available.

This book is a collection of articles written by Ilya Repin throughout his lifetime. His friend and editor Korney Chukovsky, a famous children’s poet, essayist, translator, literary critic encouraged Repin to compile articles Repin had written throughout his life and to record more of his childhood memories. Many of these are about other famous artists, critics, and educators of Repin’s time. This book is a must read for any art lover, and especially so for artists working in the classical representational tradition. When I wanted to talk about this with my English speaking friends, I was shocked to discover that there was no translation of this work which I could find or access. Having enjoyed beautiful art on both sides of the Atlantic, I have grown to love both of the artistic traditions and it seemed a huge gap that one of the preeminent Russian language art books stayed untranslated. Both traditions have so much to offer, and I love many aspects of each. Being a native speaker of both English and Russian, and also a practicing artist who has learned from artists of both traditions, I feel that it is my unique responsibility to start bridging this divide. This project is a labor of love, which I am doing for my friends in my free time.

I have started this endeavor with translating Repin’s chapter about Arkhip Ivanovich Kuindzhi, one of my favorite landscape artists.

The original text in Russian is in the public domain. The English translation is mine, with editorial, moral, and logistical help from Milene Fernandez.

List of Chapters Translated

• Arkhip Ivanovich Kuindzhi as an Artist

Upcoming Chapters

• Introductory Article by Korney Chukovsky

• Ivan Nikolaevich Kramskoy

• From my interactions with L. N. Tolstoy

• V. M. Garshin