Lev Tolstoy
You probably read the works of Lev Tolstoy, a Russian author born in 1828, in your high school honors English class. His most famous works are War and Peace and Anna Karenina. Every year from 1902 to 1906, he was considered for the Nobel Prize in Literature because of his reputation as one of the greatest authors of all time. The fact that he was never awarded the Nobel Peace Prize remains a contentious issue. In 1908, when this photo was taken, he was 80 years old.
Lev Tolstoy
Vincent van Gogh
Seeing a photograph of the 1853-born van Gogh, who is so commonly depicted in art, is shocking. Despite his obvious talent as a visionary post-impressionist painter, he never achieved widespread acclaim during his lifetime. His sister-in-law inherited his paintings and loaned them out to various art exhibitions only after his untimely death at the age of 37. Vincent van Gogh was 19 years old when this photo was taken of him in 1872.
Vincent Van Gogh
