Original 1893 portrait engraving of the young composer by T. Casper of Berlin with facsimile signature in the plate, this example signed and inscribed in ink by the composer to the lower margin to the important conductor Eugene Plotnikoff, "Al M[aestr]o. E Plotnikoff, omaggio di .P Mascagni / Mosca, 10, I, 904." Unexamined out of frame but in apparently fine condition, slight foxing to the margins, inside of glass of frame a little dirty. Sight measures 11.25 x 8.5 inches framed to 18.75 x 16 inches. A most unusual association. 

Plotnikoff, a veteran of the Moscow Imperial Theater's orchestra pit, knew Tchaikovsky, whom he called "the kindest man I have ever known." But the great Russian composer wasn't alone on Plotnikoff's celebrity list of friends and acquaintances, which included Rachmaninoff, Rimsky-Korsakov, Glière, Glazounov, Balakireff and Mascagni.

Plotnikoff began as a cello student at the Imperial Music School in Odessa. Progress there led to the Moscow Conservatory, where he was a student of the composer Vasily Sergeyevich Kalinnikov and played in the orchestra under Tchaikovsky's baton. Out on his own, Plotnikoff took up the conducting reins at Moscow's Imperial Theater, where he directed the world premiere of Rimsky-Korsakov's opera Sadko. The Imperial is also where he was ballet director for five years when Rachmaninoff was the theater's general operatic director. 

Plotnikoff left the Soviet Union in 1921 to conduct a series of operatic performances in Paris and toured the United States as a conductor for the Chaliapin Opera Company before joining the WPA Federal Music Project soon after its inception.

The Daily Worker described Plotnikoff as the "conductorial mainstay" of the New York City Federal Music Project. He began his tenure leading the Festival Orchestra (later known as the Federal Symphony) and then the 100-member New York Civic Orchestra. The New York City Symphony Orchestra followed that, and in April 1941 he took over the directorship of the WPA Manhattan Chorus.  It was the WNYC broadcast of Plotnikoff's Brooklyn Museum concert performance that was famously interrupted by the first domestic news bulletin announcing the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. He also conducted the WNYC Concert Orchestra at least a dozen times for American Music Festival and Brooklyn Museum concerts.  

Eugene Plotnikoff died tragically of a heart attack on September 29, 1951, while conducting The New York City Amateur Symphony Orchestra at their City Center rehearsal of Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony.