Lev Tolstoy
Lev Tolstoy, a renowned Russian writer born in 1828, is most known for his novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, both of which you presumably read in high school honors English class. He is still regarded as one of the finest writers of all time, and he was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature every year between 1902 and 1906. Even now, it is regarded as a big scandal why he was never awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. This photograph was taken in 1908, when he was 80 years old.
Lev Tolstoy
Vincent Van Gogh
We’re all used to viewing paintings of van Gogh, who was born in 1853, so seeing an actual photo of the painter himself is shocking. Surprisingly, as a visionary post-impressionist painter, he never achieved much popularity during his lifetime. In fact, it wasn’t until his untimely death at the age of 37 that his sister-in-law inherited his paintings and loaned them to various art exhibitions. Van Gogh was 19 years old when this photograph was taken of him in 1872.
Vincent Van Gogh
