Ilya Repin particularly enjoyed painting portraits of musicians. A leading Russian composer, conductor and professor of the St Petersburg Conservatoire, Alexander Glazunov (1865–1936) continued the traditions of the Russian Five and Peter Tchaikovsky in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. When the artist painted this portrait, the composer had already written two symphonies and the symphonic poem Stenka Razin. Glazunov repaid the debt in 1889 by dedicating an ode to Repin — Oriental Rhapsody for Large Orchestra.

Repin Ilya

Repin, Ilya Yefimovich
1844, Chuguyev (Kharkiv Province) - 1930, Kuokkala (Finland)
Painter, draughtsman, watercolour painter, portraitist, history painter. Studied under local artists at the School of Military Topography in Chuguyev (1854-57), under Ivan Kramskoi at the School of Drawing, Society for the Encouragement of Artists (1863) and at the Imperial Academy of Arts (1864-71). Fellow of the Imperial Academy of Arts in Italy and France, lived mostly in Paris (1873-76). Academician (1876). Professor, full member of the Imperial Academy of Arts (1893). Member of the Society of Travelling Art Exhibitions (1878, exhibited from 1874). Headed a studio at the Higher School of Art, Imperial Academy of Arts (1894-1907) and taught at Princess Maria Tenisheva''s school of art (1895-98). Lived in St Petersburg and Moscow, settled in Kuokkala (1900).