Describe the characteristics of the Creation in They Did Not Expect Him's History.
There are two different versions of They Did Not Expect Him. Repin began work on the first one in 1883, depicting a student's return to her family. This oil on wood painting has a relatively small format, 45.8 × 37 cm. Fifteen years later, in 1898, Repin reworked this version, making several changes to the figure of the young woman, whose face was reminiscent of his daughter Nadia. It is currently in the Tretyakov Gallery's collection. 
In his 1948 article titled "New Pages of Repin's Creative Biography," art historian Ilya Zilberstein discussed the first version of They Did Not Expect Him. According to him, the painting was intended to feature a young girl as the main character. Her revolutionary attire was strikingly similar to that of The Student in Nikolai Yaroshenko's painting, as both heroines wore plaid with a small cap on their heads. According to Ilya Zilberstein, when Repin saw The Student and read the press reviews, he decided to replace the character of the young girl in the second version of his painting with that of a young man.Repin began painting a second version, which would become the main one, in 1884. It was much larger, and the woman who had entered the room had been replaced by a man. The painter worked on it in his country house in Martyshkino, near Saint Petersburg, and posed for it with members of his family and acquaintances. The model for the exile's mother is thus partly Vera Alexeievna, Repin's wife, and partly Varvara Komarova, Stasov's daughter; that of the child, Sergei Kostytchev, the son of a neighbour, who would later be a renowned biochemist, professor, and academician; that of the young girl, Vera Repina, the painter's eldest daughter; and that of the maid, an employee of the Repins. The man entering the room is thought to be Vsevolod Garshin, whose portrait Repin worked on in 1884. The resemblance to the writer is complete in an intermediate version of the painting.The father of the exile is also depicted in the early sketches, notifying everyone else of his impending arrival. The critic Vladimir Stasov also mentions the silhouette of "an old man". Repin left only the characters who, in his opinion, were necessary for the psychological development of the theme he had chosen and for the "coherence of the scenic action" in the final version.
Vladimir Stasov Sergei Kostytchev Vsevolod Garshin Saint Petersburg Ilya Zilberstein Tretyakov Gallery Nikolai Yaroshenko Martyshkino