A leader among Russian realist painters known as the Peredvizhniki (Wanderers), Repin devoted his art to exploring the ethical, moral, and political questions that engaged the major figures of progressive Russian culture. Many of his pictures, like Arrest of a Propagandist, begun in 1878 (Tretiakov Gallery, Moscow), treat revolutionary themes. His portraits often depict contemporary intellectuals, such as Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910), the composer Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky (1839–1881), and the writer Garshin. Before his suicide in 1888, Garshin authored twenty short stories with populist themes. Repin wrote that he had wanted to paint the writer when he met him for the first time in Saint Petersburg, about 1878. Garshin later modeled for the figure of the tsarevich in Ivan the Terrible and His Slain Son (Tretiakov Gallery).

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