Napoleon Orda's Birthday

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Napoleon Orda (February 11, 1807 – April 26, 1883) was a Polish-Lithuanian musician, pianist, composer and artist.

Napoleon Orda was born in the village of Varacevičy in the Pinsk district of Minsk guberniya (now Ivanava Raion, Brest voblast, Belarus) in his father's manor. His father Michał Orda was an impoverished noble and the marshal of the powiat of Kobryn. After finishing Svislach gymnasium in 1823, he started mathematical studies at the Vilno University. However, his university career came to an end on August 27th, 1826 when he was arrested by the Russian secret police for taking part in an secret student society "Zarane", which was active in Svislach and Belastok gymnasiums. Although he was released soon afterwards, he was expelled from the university and was not allowed to continue his studies. [Read more on Wikipedia]

Orda on a 19th century lithograph

Ilya Repin's Birthday

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Ilya Yefimovich Repin (Russian: Илья́ Ефи́мович Ре́пин, Ukrainian: Ілля Юхимович Рєпін, (5 August [O.S. 24 July] 1844, Chuguyev, Kharkov Governorate, Russian Empire – September 29, 1930, Kuokkala, Viipuri Province, Finland) was a leading Russian painter and sculptor of the Peredvizhniki artistic school. An important part of his work is dedicated to his native country, Ukraine. His realistic works often expressed great psychological depth and exposed the tensions within the existing social order. Beginning in the late 1920s, detailed works on him were published in the Soviet Union, where a Repin cult developed about a decade later, and where he was held up as a model "progressive" and "realist" to be imitated by "Socialist Realist" artists in the USSR. [Read more on Wikipedia]

Self-portrait, 1878 (State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg).