The memorial section of the Nikolai Golovanov Apartment Museum displays a sculptural portrait of Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy, which was created by Naoum Aronson. The portrait of Tolstoy is a typical impressionist work, endowed with special plasticity and fluidity of form, “with an enlivening treatment of the surface and a bold use of chiaroscuro.”

Naoum Lvovich Aronson was a famous Russian and French sculptor of the 20th century. He was born in 1872 in Krāslava into an ordinary merchant family. At a young age, he graduated from the drawing school in Vilna, but, following the advice that the headmaster gave him, Naoum Aronson decided to turn to sculpture, which sealed his fate. A modeling stick turned out to be easier for him to get used to than a pencil. Having achieved significant success in the technique of modeling and drawing, Aronson created a bust of the trustee of the Vilna educational institution, who attempted to help the sculptor get into the Academy of Arts but it never happened. In 1891, with no money or knowledge of the French language, Aronson left for Paris. There, he attended a public school, where he managed to win recognition for the first time. After visiting Leo Tolstoy at Yasnaya Polyana in 1901, Naoum Aronson created a bronze sculptural portrait of the writer and about 60 pencil portraits of him.

Aronson’s contemporaries remembered him not only as a professional but also as an incredible virtuoso.

The work on display can be correlated with many other works of the late 19th — early 20th century by not only foreign painters and sculptors but also Russian ones. During the 1920s and 1930s, Naoum Aronson often visited Soviet Russia and created several works there, for the Moscow metro in particular.