The Picture Gallery in Lev Tolstoy settlement was opened in 1987. The project to establish a museum was put forward by E. S. Chernyshev, who was the head of the settlement at the time, and found the support of two prominent Moscow artists — Nikolai Sysoev, a native of Slanskoye settlement in Lev-Tolstovsky District, and his wife Nina Skorubskaya.
In 1997, the Picture Gallery was re-named in honour of Nikolai Sysoev. The gallery’s collection is primarily based around the works of Sysoev and Skorubskaya, who are considered worthy successors of the Russian realist school of painting. The gallery stores artworks by many other famous Russian artists of the second half of the 20th century, such as Yuri Kugach, Vladimir Tsigal, Sergei and Alexei Tkachev, Nikolai Solomin, Sergei Tutunov, Alexander Vagner and Vilen Dvoryanchikov.
