The museum’s collection contains an illustration of the story “Bashka” made by the artist Sergey Yakovlev. In the 1890s, he created a series of illustrations based on the collection of “Ural Stories” by Dmitry Mamin-Sibiryak.

“Bashka” is a story about beggars, down-and-out people who live in an asylum and drink away their last money. The text was based on stories that Nikolay Mamin shared with his brother.

The manuscript of “Bashka” is housed in the State Archive of the Sverdlovsk Region. The author marked the dates of work on the first and the last page: August 24 — September 5, 1884. The work was first published in the magazine “Russian Thought” [“Russkaya Mysl”] under the pseudonym “D. Sibiryak”.

Dmitry Mamin-Sibiryak’s story became popular among readers and made a strong impression on other writers — Maxim Gorky and Lev Tolstoy. They called “Bashka” one of Mamin-Sibiryak’s best stories, Gorky wrote in 1896:

Artist Sergey Yakovlev offered Dmitry Mamin-Sibiryak to illustrate several stories, including “Bashka”. They met in the winter of 1901 in St. Petersburg to discuss details. The writer liked the idea, but the work was slow.

The drawing in the museum’s collection depicts Bashka, a man leaning against a lamppost. He is dressed in a shabby worn coat, striped pants and narrow-necked boots. Yakovlev used a line-stroke technique and drew in black drafting ink on heavy white paper.