The group photo shows, from left to right: the actor Pavel Matveyevich Svobodin, the actor Vladimir Nikolaevich Davydov holding Anton Pavlovich Chekhov by his arm, and the publisher, publicist, and critic Alexey Sergeevich Suvorin. Behind them is a painted photography backdrop of interior design. This photograph was taken in December 1888 in the studio of Konstantin Shapiro, photographer of the Imperial Academy of Arts, in Saint Petersburg.

Anton Pavlovich and Pavel Svobodin had met shortly before the photo was taken. Chekhov considered Svobodin a talented, intelligent, emotional and innovative actor. He appreciated Svobodin’s manner of snickering at himself and others, giving humorous advice to his friends, twisting names and surnames. Anton Pavlovich recommended Pavel Svobodin for the role of Shabelsky, and Vladimir Davydov — for the role of Ivanov.

Vladimir Davydov, whose real name was Ivan Nikolayevich Gorelov, was one of the first Russian actors that had become close to Chekhov’s aesthetic even before the opening of the Moscow Art Theater. Davydov shared Chekhov’s ideas of man’s civic responsibility to society and himself, denunciation of vulgarity and hypocrisy. His best roles in Chekhov’s plays are Ivanov (“Ivanov”), Firs (“The Cherry Orchard”), and Chebutykin (“The Three Sisters”).

The premiere of “Ivanov” at the Alexandrinsky theater was held on January 31, 1889. One of Pavel Svobodin’s friends wrote,

Alexey Sergeevich Suvorin, pictured on the right, is the man who largely determined Chekhov’s fate as a great writer. On the recommendation of Dmitry Grigorovich, who was fascinated by the story “The Gamekeeper”, Suvorin hired Chekhov to work at the newspaper “Novoye Vremya”. This enabled Anton Pavlovich not to waste his time creating stories on commission, to renounce pseudonyms and to devote himself fully to writing. Suvorin’s publishing house published Chekhov’s first collection of short stories “In the Twilight”, for which he was awarded half of the Pushkin Prize of the Imperial Academy of Sciences.