Ilia Gintsburg
(1859– 1939)

Sculptor I. Ia. Gintsburg created portraits of numerous prominent figures of Russian culture, such as writer I. Turgenev, composer N. Rimsky-Korsakov, scientist D. Mendeleev and artists I. Aivazovski, I. Kramskoy, I. Repin, I. Shishkin and V. Surikov. He was well known as a creator of small statues that were both realistic and psychologically acute. He liked to portray his subjects at work. Examples include the portraits of the artists V. Vereshchagin (1892) and the one of Leo Tolstoy made in 1891 and presented here. Although painters N. Ghe and I. Repin had previously done busts of Tolstoy (see Ghe's and Repin's), Gintsburg was the first professional sculptor to work with him. Gintsburg sculpted the writer at least twenty times.