This 1886 photo of Ivan Goncharov was taken by the famous Saint Petersburg portrait photographer Andrey Denyer. In the 1840s, he was a student of the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts, where he studied history painting under the tutelage of Karl Bryullov. During those years, he also developed an interest in the new art of photography. In 1854, he opened his own small daguerreotype studio, experimenting with watercolor enhanced photographs. From the 1860s, Andrey Denyer had the title of “Photographer of Their Imperial Majesties”.

In 1891, the writer passed away. The photograph along with his other possessions was inherited by the housekeeper Alexandra Treygut and her three children, who Goncharov had been taking care of for many years following their father’s death. In 1892, a copy of a bigger size was taken from the image. Alexandra Treygut donated it to the Simbirsk public library named after Nikolay Karamzin, where it was placed in one of the halls. During his life, Ivan Goncharov donated more than 900 books to that library. Some of them are still stored in a separate cabinet in the museum under the Ulyanovsk Regional Scientific Library named after Vladimir Lenin.

In 1912, the city of Simbirsk celebrated the 100th anniversary of Ivan Goncharov. To commemorate this event, an exhibition was organized in the city, with one of the exhibits being the writer’s portrait photograph. It was the first item in the memorial collection honoring the life of Ivan Goncharov, and his first image to be given to the city. Later the photo was donated to the Museum of Local History.