Leo Tolstoy stands with family members on the carved wooden veranda of his estate at Yasnaya Polyana in this commercially produced Russian postcard, the Cyrillic caption "ТОЛСТОЙ И СЕМЕЙСТВО" — Tolstoy and Family — printed along the lower border of the image, with the catalog number "198" at lower right. The divided-back reverse bears the notation "10/28/08 / DABFZ / El" in pencil, placing this impression in circulation during the final years of Tolstoy's life. The card is unused and unmailed.

Eight figures are visible on the veranda, including Tolstoy at center in his characteristic peasant blouse and long beard, standing beside a young girl held by a man in a dark tunic. Additional family members flank the group, including two young men at left, a figure in a pointed cap at center right, and a man holding a small child at far right in a window embrasure. The ornately carved balustrade is a distinctive feature of the Yasnaya Polyana house, its panels decorated with cut silhouettes of birds, deer, diamond lozenges, hearts, and dot motifs in the Russian folk tradition.

Leo Tolstoy was born at Yasnaya Polyana in 1828 and lived there for most of his life, completing both War and Peace and Anna Karenina at the estate. By the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries he had become an international literary and moral celebrity, and photographs of him at Yasnaya Polyana were widely reproduced as postcards and in the illustrated press. He died in November 1910, making this card a document of the final period of his life.