Portrait of the writer N.B. Nordman-Severova, the artist's wife 1911

Ilya Repin made this portrait of his wife, N.B. Nordman-Severova, with oil on canvas, and it's full of these wonderfully gestural marks. The colors are muted, mostly greens and browns, but there's this incredible lightness to the face that just pulls you in. I can imagine Repin, brush in hand, circling his subject, trying to capture not just her likeness but something of her spirit. Maybe he was thinking about her writing, her thoughts, as he worked. There's a softness to the brushstrokes that feels like he was painting a memory, or a feeling. Look how the strokes around her collar suggest movement and energy. It's like he's whispering something about her personality through the paint. I think artists are always in conversation with each other, across time. Repin probably looked at the work of painters before him, and no doubt, painters after him looked at his, too. The way we approach painting changes, but that drive to express, to capture something real, is a constant. It's a painting that embraces ambiguity, allowing for multiple interpretations.