Tolstoy (46 page)

6. Alexandra Andreyevna Tolstaya (Alexandrine), 1860s. Tolstoy enjoyed a close friendship with his father's cousin, who was an attractive woman of formidable intellect. As a lady-in-waiting at court, she later became very useful as a conduit for letters of appeal when Tolstoy took up the cause of social and religious injustice, but there was friction when he abandoned his Orthodox beliefs.

7. The future Sofya (Sonya) Tolstaya and her younger sister Tatyana (Tanya) Bers, Moscow 1861. This photograph was taken the year before Tolstoy married Sonya. The sisters remained close, and it was in letters to Tanya that Sonya gave the most honest account of her life at Yasnaya Polyana.

8. Sonya in the drawing room at Yasnaya Polyana, 1902. This corner of the spacious drawing room was where the family and their guests would traditionally gather for evening tea. Above Sonya's head is a portrait of Tolstoy's profligate grandfather, Ilya Andreyevich.

9. The old Yasnaya Polyana mansion built by Sergey Volkonsky, where Tolstoy was born in 1828, and which he sold to a neighbouring landowner after heavy gambling losses in 1854. It was dismantled and moved, brick by brick, to the new owner's estate twenty miles away, where this photograph was taken in 1892.

10. Tolstoy's house at Yasnaya Polyana before the addition of a final extension in the 1890s. Originally, this building was intended as one of two identical guest wings which flanked the old mansion. Tolstoy made it his main residence when he retired from the army after the Crimean War.
Extensions were added in the 1860s, 1870s and 1890s to accommodate his burgeoning family and the retinue of tutors and governesses.

11. Ivan Kramskoy, portrait of Tolstoy, Yasnaya Polyana, 1873. The painting was acquired by the merchant Pavel Tretyakov for his growing collection of Russian art. Tolstoy had initially turned down requests to sit for a portrait, but was persuaded to change his mind by the personal charm of the celebrated painter, who had been staying at a dacha near to Yasnaya Polyana.

12. Repin, Tolstoy ploughing, Yasnaya Polyana, 1887. Tolstoy started working in the fields as a young man in the late 1840s, and increased his time working alongside the peasants as his feelings of guilt over their exploitation grew. After he turned his back on writing fiction for the upper classes, he preached that each person should live by the sweat of their brow, working the land. He was about to turn sixty when this portrait was painted.

13. Repin, Tolstoy in his study at Yasnaya Polyana, 1891. Tolstoy moved his study at Yasnaya Polyana several times, but this famous arched room on the ground floor, where old Prince Volkonsky had used to hang cured meats, was where he worked in the early 1860s and from 1887 to 1902. It was where he began
War and Peace,
and where he later worked on
The Kreutzer Sonata
and
Resurrection.

14. Repin's first portrait of Tolstoy, 1887. Repin had met Tolstoy back in 1880, but he wanted to get to know him well before attempting his first portrait. By this point, Tolstoy had gone through his spiritual 'crisis' and achieved international celebrity for works such as
Confession
and
What I Believe,
both ofwhich were banned in Russia.

15. Sonya standing by aportrait of her deceased son Ivan (Vanechka), Yasnaya Polyana, 1897. Sonya was devastated by the death ofher youngest son. The portrait hung above an informal shrine to his memory. Sonya took up photography after Vanechka's death, and enjoyed setting up shots such as this one, arranged on the balcony at Yasnaya Polyana.

16. Tolstoy and his Starley Rover bicycle, 1895. Tolstoy had an irrepressible appetite for trying out new enthusiasms, and when he was sixty-five, just after Vanechka Tolstoy died, he took up cycling. After buying a British-made bicycle, he went to have lessons, and then successfully acquired the licence which permitted him to cycle around Moscow.