Unknown inscribed portrait for his brother Andrey
Portrait photograph inscribed, dated and signed ("Fyodor").
Cabinet photograph, oval albumen print (vintage) with three autograph lines in ink on the reverse. 110 x 166 mm. On card imprinted by the studio Konstantin Shapiro, St Petersburg.
$94,905.00
Fine head-and-shoulders portrait. The reverse bears an uncommonly personal three-line inscription to his brother, the architect Andrey Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (1825-97): "Dorogomu bratu / Andreju ot brata / Fedora 12 Oktob[ra] / 79" ("For my dear brother Andrey from his brother Fyodor, 12 October 1879").
Not listed in the census of Dostevsky's inscriptions, published in 1990. Altogether, the editors of the scholarly 30-volume Academy of Sciences edition of Dostoevsky's works count only 42 inscriptions, of which 16 are on photographs - a surprisingly small number for a so prolific and significant author of his day.
The St Petersburg photographer and Hebrew poet Constantin Shapiro (1839-1900) was a close friend of Dostevsky's and produced several portraits of him. His fashionable studio on Nevsky Prospect was popular with celebrities, and his many famous sitters included Tolstoy, Chekhov, Tchaikovsky, Turgenev, and Gontcharov.
Tissue guards to both sides, protecting image and inscription (somewhat wrinkled); in very appealing condition. An extremely fine example of an inscribed Dostoevsky portrait, exceedingly rare.
Cf. Dostoevsky, Polnoe sobranie socinenij v tridcati tomah, XXX.2 (Dopolneniâ k izdaniû. Darstvennye i drugie nadpisi i pomety na pis'mah. Svodnye ukazateli), pp. 57-65.
