[Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky, bust, facing right]

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Tchaikovsky appears here in a bust-length view turned to the right, the sort of head-and-shoulders portrait that printers reproduced in large numbers for magazines and concert programs. The halftone process, which broke a photograph into a pattern of tiny dots so it could be printed on a rotary press, made such images inexpensive to circulate. The caption card gives no date, so the print can only be placed in general terms. Tchaikovsky (1840 to 1893) was among the most widely performed Russian composers of the late nineteenth century, and portraits like this one helped spread his public image far beyond the concert halls where his music was heard.

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