The etching on display was made by Ivan Petrovich Pozhalostin in 1884. It is titled “Portrait of Ivan Turgenev on the Hunt”.
Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev was an outstanding Russian writer, poet, and publicist, and one of the foremost proponents of anti-serfdom ideas in 19th-century Russian literature. Beginning in the early 1840s, he published stories in the journal “Sovremennik” depicting the lives of Russian peasants — works that reached their artistic zenith in the 1852 collection “A Sportsman’s Sketches”. Turgenev achieved widespread fame with such novellas as “Asya”, “A Nest of the Gentry”, “First Love”, and especially “Fathers and Sons”, all published around the 1850s. While enjoying broad recognition in Russia, he also became one of the first Russian authors to earn significant acclaim abroad during his lifetime.
Pozhalostin’s print reproduces a study made in 1879 by the artist Nikolai Dmitrievich Dmitriev-Orenburgsky for his large-scale painting “A Hunt Organized by Baron Ginzburg for Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich near Paris”. Completed in the summer of 1880, the painting is a multi-figure composition featuring Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich, Baron Ginzburg, two huntsmen, the artist himself — and, at its center, Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev, depicted in a loose shirt and round hat, holding a rifle.
The individual portraits of the hunting party were made by Dmitriev-Orenburgsky as separate studio studies; each participant, including Turgenev, posed personally for the artist. Over time, this image of Turgenev gained considerable popularity and developed an independent artistic identity. It came to be widely perceived as a visual counterpart to “Sportsman’s Sketches”, its rural setting and hunting motifs resonating deeply with the atmosphere of Turgenev’s celebrated literary cycle.
The original study is housed in the Literary Museum of the Institute of Russian Literature (Pushkin House) of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The 1884 etching — capturing Turgenev as he appeared during this actual event — was commissioned by the Glazunov Publishing and Bookselling Company of St. Petersburg for an illustrated edition of the writer’s collected works.
The choice of this particular portrait was deliberate: Turgenev himself greatly admired how faithfully Dmitriev-Orenburgsky had rendered his likeness and posture. Thus, Pozhalostin’s print became not only a work of art but also a significant biographical document — one that seamlessly integrates into Turgenev’s literary legacy and continues to captivate scholars and admirers alike.
This collaboration between 19th-century Russian artists and writers — exemplified by Dmitriev-Orenburgsky’s painting and Pozhalostin’s subsequent etching — reflects the spirit of the age and the core principles of Russian realist aesthetics.
