In profile he looks grand, focused to the outer world without worldly vanity. His stillness has hidden energy (those cross-hatchings seem like coiled springs read to pop). Tolstoy in old age was small of stature, as many visitors and acquaintances noted with surprise. But his presence here seems massive. Broad-shouldered, his hands tucked into the sides of his peasant blouse; if you look at the torso then you think this is the Tolstoy who boasted to Gorky, the real son of a real peasant, that ‘I am more of a peasant than you, and can feel things the way peasants do better than you can!’ But if you concentrate on the head, the brow slightly furrowed in thought, it seems worthy of a classical bust. The look is more Aristotle or Epicurus, or any ancient philosopher, than it is the Russian mouzhik or peasant male, and somehow Pasternak caught the two elements Tolstoy tried to fuse in his personality.

Andrew Kahn discusses an elderly Tolstoy and his later works.

Drawing by Leonid Pasternak, courtesy of Nicolas Pasternak Slater. Do not use without permission.