Ilya Repin painted a double portrait of Leo Tolstoy and his wife Sophia Andreyevna. It was completed in 1907. “At the end of September 1907, I was back again in Yasnaya Polyana, twenty years after my first visit. Lev Nikolayevich was very cheerful and healthy, but I could sense in him some kind of detachment of a righteous man. He was understanding of everything and forgave everything. <…> The Countess is endowed with a lively, genuine mind and an unusually sharp gaze. While I was painting L.N., she was making the most fitting remarks — quickly, on the fly, without any pretension,” the artist recalled about the circumstances of working on the paired portrait. Leo Tolstoy did not approve of the idea of a family portrait and posed reluctantly. “Here Repin paints portraits of Sophia Andreyevna and myself together. It’s a waste of time, but I obey so as not to offend,” he wrote to his friend Vladimir Chertkov.

The Literary Museum of the Institute of Russian Literature houses a photograph of the original version of the portrait, in which the writer is depicted facing the viewer. It is known that in the last years of his life, Tolstoy’s relationship with his wife was overshadowed by a severe conflict, which led to his infamous departure from Yasnaya Polyana at the end of October 1910 and the writer’s imminent death in Astapovo. In 1911, after learning about the difficult family situation, Repin reworked the painting. In the final version, Tolstoy, turning away from his wife, looks to the right; the viewer can sense his loneliness, misunderstanding and longing in his gaze. In the same year, the painting was displayed at an art exhibition in Rome, after which Repin personally transferred it to the Tolstoy Museum.

In his last letter to Sophia Andreyevna, in response to her call to return home, Tolstoy wrote,