Why it matters
A political exile returns home unannounced, and his family freeze in surprise: his mother rises, the children look up, the maid stands wary in the doorway. It has been described as 'one of the pinnacles of Russian art in the nineteenth century'.
Did you know?
- Repin worked on it between 1884 and 1888.
- Pavel Tretyakov bought it in 1885, but Repin kept changing the man's face afterwards.
- The girl was modelled by Repin's eldest daughter, Vera.
- It belongs to Repin's series about the narodniki.
Based on the Wikipedia article They Did Not Expect Him (CC BY-SA 4.0).
