Barge Haulers on the Volga
Ilya Repin (1844 to 1930) · 1870 to 1873
Eleven men in harness drag a barge upstream along a hot, empty sandbank. They lean against leather straps, feet sinking into the sand, faces burnt and closed. At the front walks Kanin, a defrocked priest with the head of an ancient philosopher; in the middle a young boy in pink straightens up and loosens his strap, the only figure who looks as though he might one day refuse. Behind them the Volga is wide and glittering, and a tiny steamboat on the horizon quietly announces that their trade is already obsolete.
Repin was in his twenties when he painted this, and he spent two summers on the river sketching real haulers and learning their names and stories. The result is not a protest poster but a group portrait. Each man has his own way of carrying the load: one shoulders it, one drags backwards, one has simply given up and hangs on the strap. Look at the painting of the sand and the sky, both flooded with light, and at how the dark diagonal of the men cuts across all that brightness. The colour of the boy's shirt is the one bright note, and Repin placed it there on purpose.
The painting was commissioned by Grand Duke Vladimir, the Tsar's son, which surprised critics who read it as a condemnation of Russian society. Dostoevsky praised it precisely because it did not preach; the haulers simply exist, and the viewer draws conclusions. It was shown in Vienna in eighteen seventy three and made Repin's name abroad. It came to the Russian Museum from the palace collection after nineteen seventeen. One detail to find: the small icon of a saint hanging on the barge's mast, a sign of how faith travelled with even the poorest labour.
Did You Know? Repin later wrote that one of the haulers, Kanin, had the face of a saint or a Greek philosopher and that he could never forget him.
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