During the life of Fyodor Tyutchev, none of the major artists painted his portrait. The most famous portrait was commissioned by the collector Pavel Tretyakov and painted in 1876 by Stepan Alexandrovsky. The artist based his painting on a photograph of Tyutchev, taken in 1864.

Viktor Litvinov’s ‘Tyutchev in the Summer Garden’ was painted in St. Petersburg in 1985. The artist depicted the poet surrounded by writers and other contemporaries. On a fine autumn day on the embankment, a large group of people listens to Fyodor Tyutchev, who reads poetry surrounded by like-minded people. Behind him, you can see the Neva river, a canal and some passers-by.

Despite its clarity, the composition of the painting is quite complicated. In the center is the figure of Fyodor Tyutchev. To the left of the poet is the publisher and publicist Mikhail Pogodin, the folklorist Alexander Gilferding, the writer Fyodor Dostoevsky and the poet Yakov Polonsky. On the right, there are also famous poets and writers: Nikolai Nekrasov, Afanasy Fet, Ivan Turgenev, Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin, Vladimir Dahl and Apollon Maikov. Elena Denisyeva, who Tyutchev was in love with, sits thoughtfully on a bench leaning against the fence. She holds an open book in her hands. On the right is Tyutchev’s daughter Kitty with a young Leo Tolstoy. Next to them is his son Dmitry with a dog.

The poet’s daughter Anna Tyutcheva stands with her back to the viewer, and next to her, facing a group of writers, is her sister Daria. Tyutchev is illuminated by the setting rays of the sun. As the poet Fet reminisced in his memoirs, Tyutchev ‘carefully avoided not only conversations, but even hints to his poetic activity.’ Thus, Litvinov’s picture is far from reality, because this meeting of famous writers and poets might not have taken place.