Portraits · Novelists · III of X

Leo Tolstoy

1828–1910 · Novelist

Art is not a pleasure, a solace, or an amusement; art is a great matter.
Искусство не есть наслаждение, утешение или забава; искусство есть великое дело.
Leo Tolstoy · What Is Art?, 1897–98

Read it in the source →

Leo Tolstoy wrote this in the closing chapter of What Is Art?, published in 1897–98. Art, he argued, is not there to please or console; it is an organ of human life, the way people pass feeling to one another.

What is Art?, ch. XX (Conclusion), 1897–98. Leo Tolstoy, What is Art?, tr. Aylmer Maude (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1904), p. 210.

The originals

Colour photograph of Leo Tolstoy in old age, with a long white beard, seated outdoors — **The likeness**PHOTOGRAPHED BY SERGEI PROKUDIN-GORSKY · 1908Our portrait is painted after it.Public domain (published 1908; photographer died 1944; Commons: PD-Russia, PD-old-80-expired).

The title page of War and Peace, volume four, Moscow, 1868, with library stamps — **War and Peace, 1868**Volume four of the first edition, printed in Moscow in 1868. The novel came out in six volumes, the last of them in 1869.War and Peace, vol. IV, first edition (Moscow: T. Ris, 1868), title page. State Historical Museum, Moscow, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.