Countess Tatiana Lvovna Sukhotina-Tolstaya, was a Russian painter and memoirist.
Background
She is the second child and oldest daughter of Russian writer Leo Tolstoy. Tatiana (known in her family as Tanya) was born and grew up at Yasnaya Polyana, her father"s estate south of Tula. Devoted to her father and his ideals, she had rejected a number of suitors.
Education
She demonstrated an early love of painting, and in 1881 she entered the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, where her teachers were Vasily Perov, Illarion Pryanishnikov, and Leonid Pasternak. She also studied with Nikolai Ge.
Career
Foreign several months Tatiana had a platonic friendship with Sukhotin, despite of her true feelings. But this love of mine is competing more strongly than any other has done so far."
Sukhotin"s wife died later that year, and on 9 October, Tatiana announced her desire to marry Sukhotin to her father, who responded with a fiercely uncompromising rejection ("But why a pure girl should want to get mixed up in such a business is beyond me"). Tanya gave in for the time being, but finally insisted, and on 14 November 1899 the couple were married.
They lived on Sukhotin"s estate, "Kochety" ("The Roosters") in Tula guberniya, about 30 km (19 mi) east of Orel.
After her husband"s death in 1914, Tatiana moved back to Yasnaya Polyana, which was eventually turned into a museum. From 1917 to 1923 she was guardian of the museum.
From 1923 to 1925 she was director of the Lev Tolstoy State Museum in Moscow. From Paris she moved to Italy, where she spent her final years.
In her diary entry on 13 December 1932, she wrote: "I have lived an incredibly and undeservedly happy and interesting life.
And successful."
She died in 1950 in Rome, aged 85. She was buried at the Non-Catholic Cemetery, Rome. Her memoir, based on the journals she maintained from 1878 to 1932, was published in English in 1951 and French in 1953.
Aside from excerpts in Novy Mir in 1973, her memoir was not published in Russian until 1976.
Views
Quotations:
"I am ashamed when I think of Sukhotin"s wife and children,".