Sofia Kuvshinnikova

For many years, she was the mistress of Isaac Levitan and served as the inspiration for the lead character in a short story by Anton Chekhov: Попрыгунья (The Grasshopper, 1892).

After an education which stressed the fine arts, she married Dr Dmitri Kuvshinnikov, a doctor for the police department who was much older.

[2] This was exhibited at a showing by the Peredvizhniki and, afterwards, his modest apartment became a gathering place for the creative community; a group which came to include Levitan and the Chekhovs.

She not only played piano and sewed costumes, she often went out hunting, dressed as a man, and brought back a full bag of game.

[5] The story concerns a lecherous man who has an affair with a married woman, whose husband dies of an accident (that may have been suicide) after she leaves him.

According to the memoirs of Chekhov's brother, Mikhail, the situation almost led to a duel with Levitan, but it was avoided thanks to the intercession of a mutual friend, Tatiana Shchepkina-Kupernik.

[6] It is unclear if there was ever a formal separation from her husband but, in 1894, she and Levitan settled at an estate on Lake Ostrovno in Tver Oblast.