Sadko (painting)

Based on a Russian epic poem, it depicts the merchant and musician Sadko who must choose one of the daughters of the Sea Tsar to marry.

Ilya Repin studied painting at the Imperial Academy of Arts in Saint Petersburg and had an early success with Barge Haulers on the Volga (1870–1873).

Repin painted Sadko to the right, overlooking a procession of half-human, half-aquatic women who pass by; the rejected mermaids at the front look disappointed.

Conservative and Slavophile publications such as Russkiy Mir preferred it to the cosmopolitan Paris Café, but criticised what was described as an excess of technical prowess at the expense of narrative details from the source material.

[5] The critic said poetic and fantastical subjects did not suit Repin and lamented the direction the painter had taken after Barge Haulers on the Volga.