Focus on this artwork and explain the Reception and initial censorship.
In 1885, Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan was shown for the first time to Repin's painter friends, among whom were Ivan Kramskoi, Ivan Shishkin, Nikolai Yaroshenko and Pavel Brullov. According to Repin, his hosts were stunned and silent for a long time, waiting to see what Kramskoi would say:I was seized with a feeling of complete appreciation for Repin. There it is, the thing, what a level of talent ... And how it's painted, my God, how it's painted! ... And what is this murder, carried out by a wild beast and a psychopath? ... A father hits his son with his sceptre in the temple? One moment ... He utters a cry of terror ... He grabs him, he sits him on the ground, he raises him ... He presses one of his hands on the wound in the temple (and blood gushes out of the cracks between the fingers) ... and as he bawls ... It's an animal, howling with fear ... the very spot that the son has marked with his temple ... Really, this scene is drowning us in half-light and a kind of natural tragic.
The very conservative Attorney General of the Holy Synod Konstantin Pobedonostsev told Alexander III of his "repulsion" and perplexity about the painting, which did not please the Tsar and his entourage, and on 1 April 1885, viewings of the painter were forbidden. It was the first painting to be censored in the Russian Empire, and Pavel Tretyakov, who bought it, was told "not to expose it, and more generally not to allow it to be brought to the attention of the public by any other means". The ban was lifted on 11 July 1885 after the intervention of the painter Alexey Bogolyubov.
Russian Ivan Shishkin Pavel Brullov Konstantin Pobedonostsev Alexey Bogolyubov Alexander II ru Nikolai Yaroshenko sceptre Alexander III Pavel Tretyakov Ivan the Terrible Ivan Kramskoi Russia