Leo Tolstoy in His Study
Ilya Repin. Leo Tolstoy in His Study. 1891. Oil on canvas. The State Literature Museum, Moscow, Russia.
Tolstoy, Count Leo Nikolayevich (1828-1910) Russian writer, aesthetic philosopher, moralist and mystic. He was educated privately and at Kazan University, where he read law and oriental languages, but did not graduate. In 1851 he accompanied his elder brother Nicholay to the Caucasus, where he joined an artillery regiment and there began his literary career: Childhood (1852), Boyhood (1854) and Youth (1856). Commissioned at the outbreak of the Crimean War, he commanded a battery during the defense of Sevastopol (1854-1855). After the war he published Tales of Army Life and Sketches of Sevastopol. In 1862 he married Sophia Behrs, who bore him 13 children. He settled on his estate and combined the duties of a landlord with the literary work. His novel War and Peace (1863-1869) considered the greatest novel ever written. His second great work Anna Karenina (1874-1876) carries the seeds of Tolstoy's personal crisis between the claims of the creative novelist and the moralizing propagator of his own ethical code. His doctrine founded a "religious" order of his followers and his estate became a place for piligrimage.