715. Vasily Perov (1834-1882), Russian,

Portrait of Ivan Turgenev, 1872. Oil on canvas,

102 x 80 cm. The Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.

 

 

Ivan Turgenev (1818-1883), Russian novelist, the descendant of an old Russian family, was born at Oryol, in the government of the same name, in 1818. His father, the colonel of a cavalry regiment, died when Ivan was sixteen, leaving Ivan and his brother to be brought by their mother, the heiress of the Lutovinova, a lady who owned large estates and many serfs. Ivan studied for a year at the University of Moscow, then at St. Petersburg, and was finally sent in 1838 to Berlin. His education at home had been conducted by German and French tutors, and was altogether foreign, his mother only speaking Russian to her servants, as became a great lady of the old school. For his first acquaintance with the literature of his country the future novelist was indebted to a serf of the family, who used to read to him verses from the Rossiad of Kheraskov, a once celebrated poet of the eighteenth century. Turgenev’s early attempts in literature, consisted of poems and trifling sketches. He first made a name by his striking sketches “The Papers of a Sportsman”, in which the miserable condition of the peasants was described with startling realism. It was read by all classes, including the emperor himself, and it undoubtedly hurried on the great work of emancipation. Turgenev always sympathised with the muzhiks; he had often been witness of the cruelties of his mother, a narrow-minded and vindictive woman.

Turgenev, during the later part of his life, did not reside much in Russia; he lived either at Baden-Baden or Paris. He occasionally visited England, and in 1879 an honorary doctorate was conferred upon him by the University of Oxford. He died at Bougival, near Paris, on September 4, 1883.