Portrait of Lev Tolstoy

In the summer of 1887 Repin traveled to Yasnaya Polyana, the country estate south of Moscow where Lev Tolstoy had settled into a new life. The writer was 59, and by then he had turned away from the great novels toward moral and religious questions, dressing plainly and working the land beside his peasants. Repin painted him here over just a few days, seated in a low chair with a book resting on his knee. Look at that book: Tolstoy has kept his place in two spots, as if reading were the one habit he would never give up. Repin returned to this sitter again and again, showing him barefoot and behind a plough, but this quiet study of a man absorbed in a page came first.