-By Jesper Ejsing
Everyone has a favorite painting. Mine is Repin´s “Letter to the Turkish Sultan”. The characters are portraited with so much life and gesture that it automaticly makes me grin all over my face. I have always wanted to create a painting inspired by this one, but with fantasy characters around an inn table.
In a month’s time I am going to St. Petersburg to do a workshop. I will go to the art museaum and see this specific painting in real life. I know I will cry a little, and then I will start sketching my own scene.
Love this painting! I always thought of it as a masterclass in painting awesome facial expressions. Can't wait to see your fantasy version!
You can almost imagine being in there and what they are writing, almost as if it were a bunch of high school guys writing a letter to the school director. I love their expressions.
Yeah, it doesn't get much better than that painting by Repin. I also love Sadko by Repin. The procession always creeped me out with their doll like faces.
I have always loved Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose by Sargent. There is also a very hard to find painting by Dean Cornwell called “The Torrent.” I have an old Illustration Collector book from Illustration Houze, with the painting on the cover.
What a marvelous painting! Thank you so much for posting it and I look forward to more details of it. And thank you too, Christoffer G. B. for posting a translation of the letter. Something tells me the Sultan's minions were rather…reluctant… to translate it exactly.
I had the good fortune to see this painting several years ago when the Peredvizhniki traveling exhibition was here in Stockholm (along with so many other mind-blowing pieces from that movement). It's every bit as wonderful to stand in front of as you might imagine, but I was also already reeling from all the other paintings in the room… I'd like a chance to see it again and really spend more time with it. I envy you, Jesper!
Jesper, Recently, once again I looked at the picture again in the museum . As far as I understand, you will soon arrive at the Saint – Petersburg on ARTILLERY Festival and will be able to visit the Russian Museum and see this painting with your own eyes , as well as many other great pictures of our masters Siemiradzki , Sawicki , Vrubel , Vasnetsov , Vereshchagin , Serov , and Repin , and of course others. And I, in turn, will be able to visit your masterclass )
thanks