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LEO TOLSTOY
by Ivan Nikolaevich Kramskoy
1873
Ivan
Nikolaevich Kramskoy [Russian, 1837-1887]
It was the collector of Russian art Pavel Tretyakov who commissioned the Portrait of Leo Tolstoy for his gallery. Tolstoy had refused several times. “Please use all your charm to persuade him “, wrote Tretyakov to Kramskoy. And Kramskoy managed to do this, the writer and the artist were both impressed by each other’s personalities. Kramskoy painted one of the best of all Tolstoy’s portraits. Tolstoy was working on Anna Karenina at the time and he used Kramskoy’s character as one of the secondary personages in the novel – the artist Mikhailov.
Kramskoy taught in The Drawing School of the Society for Promoting of the Artists; one of his students was Iliya Repin, who also painted a portrait of Tolstoy, a portrait of Tolstoy in his study, and a portrait of Tolstoy as a plowman.
It was the collector of Russian art Pavel Tretyakov who commissioned the Portrait of Leo Tolstoy for his gallery. Tolstoy had refused several times. “Please use all your charm to persuade him “, wrote Tretyakov to Kramskoy. And Kramskoy managed to do this, the writer and the artist were both impressed by each other’s personalities. Kramskoy painted one of the best of all Tolstoy’s portraits. Tolstoy was working on Anna Karenina at the time and he used Kramskoy’s character as one of the secondary personages in the novel – the artist Mikhailov.
Kramskoy taught in The Drawing School of the Society for Promoting of the Artists; one of his students was Iliya Repin, who also painted a portrait of Tolstoy, a portrait of Tolstoy in his study, and a portrait of Tolstoy as a plowman.