Yasnaya Polyana is a writer's house museum, the former home of the writer Leo Tolstoy. It is 12 kilometres (7.5 mi) southwest of Tula, Russia, and 200 kilometres (120 mi) from Moscow.

Ilya Yefimovich Repin was a Ukrainian-born Russian painter. He became one of the most renowned artists in Russia in the 19th century. His major works include Barge Haulers on the Volga (1873), Religious Procession in Kursk Province (1880–1883), Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan (1885); and Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks (1880–1891). He is also known for the revealing portraits he made of the leading Russian literary and artistic figures of his time, including Mikhail Glinka, Modest Mussorgsky, Pavel Tretyakov, and especially Leo Tolstoy, with whom he had a long friendship.