Tatyana Sukhotina-Tolstaya

Who was Tatyana Sukhotina-Tolstaya?

Countess Tatyana Lvovna Sukhotina-Tolstaya, was the oldest daughter of the Russian writer Leo Tolstoy.

Tatyana (known in her family as Tanya) grew up close to both her mother and father. She early demonstrated a 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.

Devoted to her father and his ideals, she had rejected a number of suitors, but in 1897 she fell seriously in love with Mikhail Sergeevich Sukhotin, who was in his fifties and married, with six children.

Tanya carried on a kind of platonic romance with him, met him secretly, suffered from the falseness of the situation but could not bring herself to break it off. "I am ashamed when I think of Sukhotin's wife and children," she wrote, "although he assured me that I am depriving them of nothing and although I know his wife stopped loving him long ago. And also, "Papa is the great rival of all lovers and none has been able to vanquish him yet. But this love of mine is competing more strongly than any other has done so far."