The portrait of Yelizaveta Tolstaya was painted by Nikolay Maykov, the father of a Russian poet Apollon Maykov. He depicted his model in a black ballgown trimmed with white lace. Her sleek hair is styled according to the fashion of the 1850s, with a light translucent veil covering her head. Ivan Goncharov said about Tolstaya,
Yelizaveta Tolstaya
Creation period
1855
Place of сreation
St. Petersburg
Dimensions
74x58 cm
Technique
canvas, oil
Collection
Exhibition
3
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Nikolay Maykov
Yelizaveta Tolstaya
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There is no woman more beautiful than you in this world and therefore anywhere else: there is, of course, heaven, but there are no women, rather cherubim and seraphim.
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Yelizaveta Tolstaya came from an old noble Simbirsk family. The 31-year-old Goncharov first met her in Saint Petersburg in 1843, when she was 16 years old. He left a note in his new acquaintance’s memory book, where he wished her “a bright and carefree future”.
Goncharov and Tolstaya met again twelve years later, in 1855. Although Yelizaveta Tolstaya was already 28 years old, she still was not married. Tolstaya soon left Saint Petersburg for Moscow, but shortly before that she accompanied Nikolay Maykov to the famous photographer Sergey Levitsky’s studio: the artist asked to have her picture taken, for he needed it to paint a portrait of her. Unfortunately, the negative was accidentally destroyed by the photographer’s apprentice, therefore there could be no copies made of the photo. Goncharov kept the only copy and would later lend it to Maykov for a while so that he could paint the promised portrait.
After leaving for Moscow, Yelizaveta Tolstaya began to correspond with Ivan Goncharov. The writer sent her chapters from his novel “Pour et contre” (For and Against), where he spoke of his own love through the words of an imaginary friend and confessed,
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I am haunted by her… Somehow I feel confined: one moment it seems that I am surrounded by terrible darkness and fog, standing on the edge of the precipice, and then the light and brilliance of her eyes and face illuminate me — it is like floating on cloud nine.
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However, Yelizaveta Tolstaya did not return Goncharov’s feelings. In 1857, she married an officer Alexander Musin-Pushkin. As they were cousins, the church refused to perform a marriage ceremony, so the permission for it had to be obtained from the Holy Synod.
In the summer of the same year, Ivan Goncharov went to Austria, to the resort town of Marienbad (now Mariánské Lázně). There he started writing his novel “Oblomov”. Yelizaveta Tolstaya became one of the prototypes for the novel’s character Olga Ilyinskaya.
In the summer of the same year, Ivan Goncharov went to Austria, to the resort town of Marienbad (now Mariánské Lázně). There he started writing his novel “Oblomov”. Yelizaveta Tolstaya became one of the prototypes for the novel’s character Olga Ilyinskaya.
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Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation
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Yelizaveta Tolstaya
Creation period
1855
Place of сreation
St. Petersburg
Dimensions
74x58 cm
Technique
canvas, oil
Collection
Exhibition
3
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