Portrait of Lev Tolstoy

Ilya Repin's Portrait of Lev Tolstoy (1887) is one of the most significant artist-writer collaborations of the Russian nineteenth century — the greatest Russian realist painter capturing the greatest Russian novelist in a portrait of corresponding psychological depth. Repin and Tolstoy were personal friends who shared convictions about the moral obligations of art; their relationship informed Repin's repeated attempts to capture Tolstoy in paint, each one probing further into the writer's complex inner life. The 1887 portrait belongs to Repin's mature period of psychological portraiture, which he considered a continuation of Tolstoy's own realist project in a different medium.

Repin renders Tolstoy with the penetrating psychological observation that makes his portraits among the most significant in Russian art. The writer's distinctive features — the deep-set eyes, the massive beard, the physical presence of a man who was simultaneously prophet and peasant — are captured with documentary accuracy and psychological depth. His palette is warm and academic, with chiaroscuro used to isolate the face as the portrait's psychological center. The handling achieves both physical likeness and the spiritual intensity that Tolstoy projected in life.