This cabinet photograph portrays the Sholokhov family: Aleksandr Mikhailovich, Anastasia Danilovna, and their son Mikhail. The picture was taken according to the photographic traditions of the early 20th century. Two adults and a child between them stand against a painted landscape backdrop. The father sits on a rounded wooden chair, slightly leaning against its back. He is dressed in a dark three-piece suit, a light-colored shirt, and a tie. The chain attached to his vest indicates that he has a watch inside his pocket. On his head is an elegant light-colored hat with a dark stripe.
Mikhail Sholokhov’s mother is depicted standing. She rests her right hand on her son’s shoulder. She is wearing a dark Sunday dress with a fringed shawl wrapped about it. Her hair is neatly pulled back in a traditional hairstyle of married Cossack women.
The young Mikhail is portrayed standing between his parents. He is wearing a jacket with light-colored buttons, a white shirt, dark trousers, and leather boots. On his head is a dress cap with a white top.
All members of the family have composed, tranquil, and serene faces. This was not the first photographic experience for the Sholokhovs. The parents adored their only son Mikhail and regularly took pictures of him as he was growing up. This is why even earlier photos of the future writer have been preserved to this day.
The writer’s parents met when his mother served the Popovs, landowners from the Yasenevsky hamlet. They married her off to the widowed Cossack Stephan Kuznetsov but the two of them did not get along. Anastasia returned to the Popov house where she got acquainted with Aleksandr Sholokhov who had come on business.
Soon, Sholokhov took the young woman to the Kruzhilin hamlet where she became his housekeeper and then a cohabiting partner. In 1905, the couple had a son whom they named Mikhail. For the first eight years of his life, he bore the last name of his mother — Kuznetsov. As long as the first husband of Anastasia was alive, she could not marry Aleksandr. It happened only in 1913. In his autobiography, Mikhail Sholokhov wrote, “my father, Sholokhov, adopted me (he had not been married to my mother before), and I was recognized as ‘the son of a bourgeois citizen’.
Mikhail Sholokhov’s mother is depicted standing. She rests her right hand on her son’s shoulder. She is wearing a dark Sunday dress with a fringed shawl wrapped about it. Her hair is neatly pulled back in a traditional hairstyle of married Cossack women.
The young Mikhail is portrayed standing between his parents. He is wearing a jacket with light-colored buttons, a white shirt, dark trousers, and leather boots. On his head is a dress cap with a white top.
All members of the family have composed, tranquil, and serene faces. This was not the first photographic experience for the Sholokhovs. The parents adored their only son Mikhail and regularly took pictures of him as he was growing up. This is why even earlier photos of the future writer have been preserved to this day.
The writer’s parents met when his mother served the Popovs, landowners from the Yasenevsky hamlet. They married her off to the widowed Cossack Stephan Kuznetsov but the two of them did not get along. Anastasia returned to the Popov house where she got acquainted with Aleksandr Sholokhov who had come on business.
Soon, Sholokhov took the young woman to the Kruzhilin hamlet where she became his housekeeper and then a cohabiting partner. In 1905, the couple had a son whom they named Mikhail. For the first eight years of his life, he bore the last name of his mother — Kuznetsov. As long as the first husband of Anastasia was alive, she could not marry Aleksandr. It happened only in 1913. In his autobiography, Mikhail Sholokhov wrote, “my father, Sholokhov, adopted me (he had not been married to my mother before), and I was recognized as ‘the son of a bourgeois citizen’.
