"Aivazovsky painted the sea wonderfully... And I was honored to paint a figure there,"  Ilya Repin commented on his role in the creation of this painting.  However, it should be noted that such remarks were typical of Repin, he enthusiastically described the others while he was very derogatory about his "humble talents". However, this does not lessen the merits of this really marvelous sea, and we will not be so strict to the figure.

Pushkin and his wife Natalie Goncharova visited the exhibition in Academy of arts in September 1836. The students ran into the hall to look closely at the poet. Aivazovsky was among them. The Academy inspector Krutov introduced him to Pushkin as a contender for the gold medal. The young Aivazovsky remembered well how affectionately the poet greeted him.

Aivazovsky painted Pushkin many times. We can find portraits in Aivazovsky's oeuvre, but he was not a portrait painter, his talent was evident in depicting sea and sky. It was a brilliant idea to invite Repin for collaboration. The thing is that if a painting features figures, they are always immeasurably small in comparison with Aivazovsky's favorite element, and it is not only about the physical size. Here, Aivazovsky found a great way not to overshadow the figure of Pushkin  by the element when he asked an outstanding portraitist Ilya Repin to paint the figure. As a result, we admire Aivazovsky's magnificent sea in its best - energetic, lively, frenetic, with transparent emerald waves breaking over a rocky shore, with the noise that you hear when you look at the painting. And the Pushkin's figure is well painted. He gazes into the distance, as if listening to the roar of the waves, with his hair swaying in the wind. In one hand he is holding his hat, and the poet's other hand rests on the stone. Aivazovsky imagined that the poet was saying his farewell lines to the sea:

Farewell, the free element!
It is the last time that
You roll your blue waves 
And shine with your proud beauty for me...



Written by Alyona Esaulova