Ilya Ginzburg created several sculptural portraits of Leo Tolstoy, the classic author of Russian literature, which he sculpted at Yasnaya Polnaya, the famous writer’s estate. One of the more successful works is this statuette, which captures Tolstoy working on a manuscript. The sculpture manages to convey both concentration and his inspired immersion in the creative process.

Ginzburg Ilya

Ginzburg, Ilya Yakovlevich (1859, Hrodno — 1939, Leningrad)

The sculptor Ilya Ginzburgstudied under Marcus Antokolsky from 1871 to 1878, then for a further eight years at the Imperial Academy of Arts, where he was granted full membership in 1911. Ginzburg was an exponent of genre sculpture and took special interest in subjects related to childhood. He created numerous portrait statuettes and busts of famous artists, writers, scientists, and public figures: Vladimir Stasov (1889), Dmitry Mendeleev (1890), Leo Tolstoy (1891), Pyotr Tchaikovsky (1892), Vasily Vereshchagin (1892), Ivan Shishkin (1892) and others, as well as tombstones of Vladimir Stasov (1908), Mark Antokolsky (1909) and Dmitry Mamin-Sibiryak (1915).