Portrait of Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy

This portrait of Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy, painted in 1836 and held in the Russian Museum, captures the writer at the age of nineteen, before he had achieved the literary fame that would come with his poetry, historical novels, and satirical verse. Tolstoy — not to be confused with his much more famous cousin Leo Tolstoy — became one of the most admired Russian Romantic poets and historical novelists of the mid-nineteenth century, as well as co-author (under the pseudonym Kozma Prutkov) of celebrated literary parodies. In 1836 he was a young man of the court, well-connected through family and having just returned from European travels. Bryullov and Tolstoy may have been acquainted through shared aristocratic social circles, as Bryullov moved in the highest levels of St. Petersburg society. The portrait shows the psychological acuity Bryullov brought to young male sitters, capturing the intelligence and slightly restless energy of a gifted young man before he had found his literary voice.

Bryullov's treatment of a young male sitter in his late teens requires a different approach than his mature portraits: he softens the facial modeling slightly to capture youth without sacrificing psychological definition. The clothing is fashionable but not overly formal. The background neutral as always.