Barge Haulers on the Volga is an oil painting on canvas completed between 1870 and 1873 by the
realist artist
Ilya Repin. It depicts eleven men
physically dragging a
barge on the banks of the
Volga River. Depicting these men as at the point of collapse, the work has been read as a condemnation of profit from inhumane labor.
Barge Haulers on the Volga drew international praise for its realistic portrayal of the hardships of working men, and launched Repin's career. It has been described as "perhaps the most famous painting of the
Peredvizhniki movement [for]....its unflinching portrayal of backbreaking labor". Today, the painting hangs in the
Russian Museum in
Saint Petersburg.
Painting: Ilya Repin