The portrait of Ivan Sytin’s wife Yevdokiya Ivanovna was painted by Alexander Viktorovich Moravov, who knew the publisher’s family well. In 1903–1911, he taught at the Art School run by the typographic and lithographic printing company of Sytin & Co. The school had been established and headed by his teacher — the artist Nikolay Kasatkin. A little later, Moravov created a number of paintings for the album “Russian History in Pictures”, published by Sytin. In 1909, the artist worked on illustrations for children’s stories by Leo Tolstoy. He received an invitation to come to Yasnaya Polyana and painted a portrait of the great writer, which was shown at the 38th Itinerant Exhibition.
Yevdokiya Ivanovna supported all her husband’s endeavors for 48 years. She made sure that there was a strict routine at home and nothing distracted her husband from his business. Ivan Sytin respected and loved his wife, always consulting with her not only on family matters, but also on business-related issues. She supported him both in day-to-day life and in difficult situations, for example, when print runs were destroyed at the request of censors or when there were problems with the publication of a newspaper.
When the state of affairs of his newspaper “The
Russian Word” (Russkoye Slovo) began to improve, the staff arranged a banquet
and jointly presented Ivan Sytin’s wife with an address,
