Illustrations for ‘The Brothers Karamazov’ by Boris Grigoriev (PICS)

Boris Grigoriev emigrated from Russia after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, but his homeland never left him. During more than 10 years of life in France and then in the United States, he worked on his large-scale project – illustrations for the novel ‘The Brothers Karamazov’. “This is not Dostoevsky, this is Russia,” the artist once said. 

The only time the illustrations appeared in public was in 1933, at an exhibition in New York. Because of the Great Depression in the U.S., a book with drawings by Grigoriev was never published. After that, they ended up in a private collection and didn’t appear in public. 

Today, these illustrations can be seen again at the retrospective exhibition of Boris Grigoriev at the Fabergé Museum in St. Petersburg, which will last until January 28, 2024.

Here are some of those 58 illustrations. (Read a short summary of the novel here and discover more about the artist in our article here.)

Father Zosima blesses Alyosha

A monastery

Pavel Smerdyakov

The ‘Reeking’ Lizaveta

Katerina Ivanovna and Dmitri Karamazov

Agrafena (‘Grushenka’)

Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov in his room

Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov next to the window

Ivan Karamazov and Smerdyakov

The party in Mokroye

Jury in a court

Interrogation of Katerina