The Artist and the Prophet: The Friendship of Ilya Repin and Leo Tolstoy

Ilya Repin, one of the Russian Empire’s most renowned artists, first met Lev Tolstoy in Moscow in 1880. Over the next thirty years, until the author’s death in 1910, the two developed a close personal friendship founded on profound mutual admiration, despite their philosophical differences. Repin became a frequent visitor at Tolstoy’s estate at Yasnaya Polyana, where he was able to observe him in ordinary life as a husband, father, writer, reader, walker, and laborer.

Because this access allowed Repin to study Tolstoy for long stretches at a time, his twelve portraits and dozens of sketches possess an unusual intimacy, even as they elevate their subject into a monumental figure.

Even as Tolstoy emerged in the 1890s and early 1900s as an increasingly radical moral and religious authority, condemning institutions, private property, and much of the artistic culture to which Repin remained devoted, the painter continued to visit Yasnaya Polyana, capturing both the ordinary life of his aging friend and the growing authority of his public image.

Their encounters and correspondence also offer a glimpse into the progression of Tolstoy’s ideas about art and aesthetics, from his early judgments of Repin’s individual paintings to the increasingly radical theories of artistic value that would culminate in What Is Art? in the 1890s.

Indeed, their relationship was complicated and was never one of simple agreement or discipleship. Repin was repeatedly overwhelmed by the force of Tolstoy’s personality and revered his moral seriousness but did not agree with many aspects of Tolstoy’s philosophy. Tolstoy, meanwhile, held Repin in high esteem, but became increasingly suspicious of the artistic world to which the painter belonged. Their friendship, thus, was defined by a tension between mutual personal admiration and philosophical disagreement.

This is the first in a two-part series about the thirty-year relationship between Tolstoy and Repin, covering their first meeting in 1880 through Repin’s first visit to Yasnaya Polyana in 1887 and its aftermath.

Ilya Repin’s 1873 painting Barge Haulers on the Volga thrust the painter into the spotlight, with some considering at the time him to be the “Tolstoy of painting”. In the autumn of 1880, Tolstoy paid a visit to Repin’s studio on Bolshoy Trubny Lane in Moscow. Writing of the encounter years later, Repin exclaimed, “everything suddenly assumed a kind of dawn tone and trembled in a peculiar high spirits, when a stocky gentleman with a thick gray beard, a big-headed man dressed in a long black frock coat, came in to see.”

Tolstoy’s comments on particular paintings, for Repin, exposed inadequacies in his own work and stirred in him a reconsideration of what an artist ought to do. “Forgive me for troubling you,” the artist wrote. “The purpose of this letter is to thank you for your visit; indeed, you have brought me enormous spiritual benefit.”

In a letter to Stasov on October 17 th, Repin explained that he had written to Tolstoy, noting that he had written and torn up several letters before finally sending “the shortest and driest one.” Repin also recounted Tolstoy’s comments on his paintings. Tolstoy was especially taken with At Daybreak, but viewed some of his major works, specifically S ophia, The Zaporizhians, an d Barge Haulers on the Volga not as paintings, but as mere sketches or, in Tolstoy’s words, “études”. “And this is all true,” Repin wrote.

Tolstoy also discussed Religious Procession in Kursk Province, which at the time was still a work-in-progress. According to Repin, Tolstoy saw the procession itself as the height of Orthodox ritual and wondered how Repin “could take such a hackneyed, worn-out subject, in which he saw absolutely nothing.” Repin agreed with Tolstoy’s assessment and apparently took it to heart. When the painting was finished three years later, it was seen as a thinly veiled criticism of Russia’s caste system, implying that the Empire was held together with violence.

Tolstoy’s thoughts on art, of course, would continue to evolve alongside his radical aesthetic framework, culminating in his 1897 What is Art, in which he rejected technical mastery and aesthetic beauty as sufficient measures of artistic value and instead judged art according to its moral purpose. His comments in Repin’s studio in 1880, thus, offer an early glimpse of concerns that would later become central to his aesthetic thought.

Tolstoy’s own contemporary record of the 1880 visit is remarkably terse. The morning after his visit to Repin’s Moscow studio, he wrote a letter to his wife, Sofia, summarizing his activities the previous day. “In the evening I was at Repin’s” was all he wrote of the visit.

Despite their common affection for one another, the eight-day stay did widen some of the preexisting philosophical divide between them. Writing to Chertkov after his visit, Repin noted that when he was with Tolstoy, he was under the “influence of a strong, brilliant personality”, and in that moment could find “absolutely no objections”. However, after being separated from Tolstoy, many objections to Tolstoy’s philosophy arose in his mind.

Sofia then wrote a letter to Stasov conveying the family’s wish that the image not be publicly exhibited, distributed, or sold. Hearing the news, Repin then wrote to Sofia, noting “Your letter to V. V. Stasov struck us here so hard that we simply do not know what to do.” According to Repin, before departing Yasnaya Polyana, Tolstoy had given him permission to produce a painting from the sketches.

Repin attempted to explain the importance of showing the painting: “It would be strange and incomprehensible now to forbid this picture from life, depicting the great writer behind one of the most significant acts of his private, non-writer’s life; in this example of the great physical labor for which he so advocated.”

Ultimately, the Tolstoy family agreed to the circulation of the image. Stasov had argued that forbidding Repin to distribute the image was inconsistent with Tolstoy’s professed indifference to public opinion, and on November 10 th, Tolstoy agreed.

Repin proceeded with the reproduction of The Ploughman: Leo Tolstoy in the Ploughland. The reproductions sold well, but Repin was still bothered by the dispute that the image had brought between he and the Tolstoys. In a letter to Pavel Tretakov in March 1888, Repin exclaimed “The chromolithographs of The Ploughman are going briskly; at Ilyin’s they cannot print them fast enough. But I am terribly ashamed. I imagine when this edifying little picture appears in the windows of Moscow shops!!! What will the Countess say! The children!.. Walking along Nevsky Prospect, I happened to see Lev Nikolaevich in Felten’s window, modestly plowing, in a peasant rope harness, in a homespun shirt, and I blushed, wrapped myself in my overcoat and hurried — past. I confess, it troubled me for a long time.”

But then Repin changes his mind. He says, in effect, let the overdressed, corrupted rich look at how “the worthiest, great man” spends his leisure doing useful labor; he ends by saying they are not worth even the poorest rope of Tolstoy’s peasant harness.

The dispute, however, would not be the last time Repin’s admiration for Tolstoy collided with his resistance to Tolstoy’s ideas. As their relationship progressed, so too did their disagreements over a wide range of topics. The progression of their relationship will be explored in Part II.

Originally published at https://kinville.substack.com on August 13, 2026.