1887
paper, lead pencil
27,8 x 40,3

Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy (1828–1910), the great Russian writer, author of the novels War and Peace (1863–1869), Anna Karenina (1873–1877), Resurrection (1889–1899), and of the novellas Death of Ivan Ilyich (1884–1886), The Kreuzer Sonata (1887–1889), of the plays Power of Darkness (1886) and The Living Corpse (1900), as well as of works on philosophical, religious and aesthetic subjects. In August 1887, Repin spent a week as a guest of Lev Tolstoy on his estate in Yasnaya Polyana where he did two portraits of the writer in oil paint and a number of sketches. The artist later recalled: “On one hot August day, in the blazing heat right after breakfast Lev Nikolaevich decided to plough the field of a widow…For six hours straight, without rest he ploughed the dark earth, going up hills and down inclines towards a ravine. I had an album in my hands and lost no time setting myself up in the middle of his route and capturing the moment when this cortege went past me…”

at 10, Lavrushinsky Lane, Hall 30