Shepherd with a Flock of Sheep

Inscription: Signed and dated (lower left, in Russian): I Repin 70

Mary Jane Dastich, New York (until d. 1975)

Katharine Baetjer. European Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art by Artists Born Before 1865: A Summary Catalogue. New York, 1995, p. 179, ill.

Tatiana V. Sumina. Letter to Valerie von Volz. August 7, 1996, states that this picture "is most probably not by" Repin.

Repin was a subject of the Russian Empire until it ended in 1917 and then a resident of Finland until his death in 1930. He also had strong Ukrainian biographical and cultural ties during a period of growing Ukrainian national consciousness. As a result, his national identities are complex. The Department of European Paintings currently describes Repin as "Ukrainian, born Russian Empire," to reflect the dual intersecting nationalities identified in scholarship on the artist.

The city where Repin lived from 1889 to 1930, Kuokkala, was part of the Grand Duchy of Finland, a self-governing part of the Russian Empire, until the Russian Revolution in 1917, when the town was absorbed within independent Finland. Kuokkala became part of the Soviet Union in the 1940s. It was renamed Repino, in honor of Repin, in 1948, and is now considered part of St. Petersburg.

On Repin’s national identities, see Thomas M. Prymak, "A Painter from Ukraine: Ilya Repin," Canadian Slavonic Papers / Revue Canadienne des Slavistes 55, nos. 1–2 (March–June 2013), pp. 19–43. Prymak considers the arguments for the artist’s Ukrainian and Russian national identities. See also Leigh 2022.

This painting was given to The Met by the widow of Frantisek Dastich, a member of the Czechoslovakian resistance in World War II and a brigadier general in that nation’s military, who came to the United States after Communists gained power in Czechoslovakia in 1948.