A. S. Pushkin at the Black Sea coast

Pushkin died in a duel in 1837, and this was painted 50 years later, in 1887, when Russia was marking the half-century since his death. Aivazovsky had a personal reason to take it up. As a young man he had actually met the poet, in 1836, at an exhibition in Saint Petersburg, and the memory stayed with him for life. Here he sets Pushkin alone on the rocks above a heaving Black Sea, the element Aivazovsky painted better than anyone in Russia. It echoes Pushkin's own farewell poem to the sea from 1824. The poet is small against the water, hat in hand, turned toward the waves rather than toward us.