Isaac Brodsky was a student of llya Repin. Like his teacher he painted landscapes (views of the North and South) and portraits in his youth, then changed course and dove into social realism: Lenin in Smolny, Lenin's Intervention at the meeting of workers from the Putilov factory. Works by Russian masters from the late 19C and early 20C, including Repin, Levitan and Kustodiev, are also on display in the museum, housed in the apartment where the artist lived from 1924 until his death in 1939.