Is it true that Pavel Tretyakov forbade Ilya Repin from entering his gallery?

There are many publications on the Internet that the caretakers had to prevent Repin in every possible way if he wanted to visit the Tretyakov Gallery and try to rewrite his paintings. Let's figure out if this really happened.

Apparently, the legend comes from the book of memoirs of Nikolai Mudrogel. He began working with Tretyakov as a young man and even lived in the collector’s house, where he observed his work and his environment. Mudrogel gave almost 60 years of his life to the gallery and left memoirs in which he reflected on art, talked about Tretyakov and his relationships with Russian artists of that time, including Repin.

Mudrogel recalls that Tretyakov both appreciated and feared Repin, for whom “it cost nothing, instead of correcting some small place in the picture, to rewrite much more.” At the same time, not everyone liked the updated paintings, and it was because of this that a conflict arose with the gallery owner.

In 1885, Tretyakov bought the painting “They Didn’t Expect.” The newspapers wrote that the face of a Narodnaya Volya member who returned from exile “does not harmonize with the faces of the family.” Two years later, when Tretyakov was not in Moscow, Repin came to the gallery and assured the curators that he was allegedly allowed to correct the canvas. After half an hour of work, the artist, without asking anyone about anything, moved to “Ivan the Terrible and his son Ivan” and changed the tone of the tsar’s face, and then headed to “The procession in the Kursk province” and made the background more “dusty.” Without waiting for Tretyakov to return, Repin went back to St. Petersburg, from where he sent it to a collector letter:

You already know, of course, that yesterday I was in your gallery; I corrected what was needed in the film “Ivan the Terrible”, finally corrected the face of the person entering in the film “They Didn’t Expect” (now, it seems to me, so) and touched the dust a little in “Procession” - it was red.
<…>
Yes, regarding your gallery: the 1st Great Hall has now become very ugly: many things are monotonous in tone and variegated in size; large paintings are not given their proper places. The impression is restless and ungraceful.
<…>
In general, the placement really upset me, only mine hang well.

The collector was furious when he discovered the edits made without his knowledge, and even stopped communicating with Repin for several months. When he returned to Moscow, Tretyakov summoned Mudrogel and another curator to a confrontation with the artist, criticized the updated paintings and was indignant that Repin was allowed to approach them at all. But still, the memoirs do not mention an explicit ban on visiting the gallery: “Tretyakov was very strict. From then on, he was very afraid to let Repin correct his own paintings.” Probably, Ilya Efimovich made similar attempts in the future, because in 1891 he in his letter Suvorin complained:

Every time I come to Moscow, I correct something in my things - I would rewrite them all again. Tretyakov told me the last time that he forbids me to do this. At first I was offended, but after thinking about it, I agreed that he was right.

Apparently, the widely circulated story about how Repin was not allowed into the Tretyakov Gallery at all is more like a historical anecdote. Although there is some factual background behind it.

Half-truth

What do our verdicts mean?

Read on topic:

1. N. Mudrogel. Fifty-eight years at the Tretyakov Gallery. – L.: Artist of the RSFSR, 1962.
2. I. Repin. Letters (http://az.lib.ru/r/repin_i_e/text_1892_pisma.shtml)