The First Known Image
of Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy as a Student
Unknown artist, sketch, no later than 1847

For a long time, Tolstoy did not want to be painted. The only early image of him that we have is a sketch done by an unknown artist while Tolstoy was a student in Kazan (1844-1847).

The next portrait of Tolstoy, and the first one in a long line of his images created (painted, sketched and sculpted) by numerous famous and amateur artists, was done more than 25 years later. Only in 1873 was Ivan Kramskoy able to convince Tolstoy to pose for him.