The vocalist has this painting Vsevolod Mikhailovich Garshin by

Illia Repin behind him.

Repin was born in the Ukrainian town of Chuhuiv when it was part of the Russian Empire. He went on to become a major progressive painter. In the early 1880s, he met Garshin, an acclaimed writer who shared his concern for contemporary political and social problems. Repin made several portraits in this decade of artists in his orbit in Moscow and St. Petersburg. The rich tonal contrasts and lush brushwork are indebted to art he saw while studying in Paris. Four years after this picture was painted, Garshin, scarred by the suicides of his father and brother and his own mental illness, threw himself down a stairwell and died.