photos of Russian empire

[Michael Denner]

Predictably enough, one of Prokudin-Gorskij's first subjects was L. N. Tolstoy during the latter's Jubilee in 1908. P-G's well-known color picture of LNT - high leather boots, leather pants, blue shirt, sitting sage-like on a bent-twig chair at Yasnaya Polyana - was advertised as "the first Russian color photo-portrait." Many now assume that it was a tinted photo - but no, indeed, it was,  "исполненный   лишь техническими приемами, без  всякого  участия  кисти  или  резца  художника." I find the color to be vivid, if not realistic or terribly subtle.

You can read a very interesting article (written in 1970) that describes the technical process as well as the story behind the photo here:
http://lib.ru/LITRA/TOLSTOJ/fototolst.txt

You can see the photo of LNT at: 
http://www.muar.ru/ve/2003/prokudin/.
 

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