The painting shows Majit Gafuri, the first national poet of Bashkortostan, on the bank of the Belaya River. The artist depicted him sitting on a rock with a notebook and looking far into the distance. Zinnur Uraksin, director of the History, Language and Literature Institute, donated the work to the museum’s collection in 2000. The gift was timed to the 120th anniversary of the birth of Majit Gafuri. Earlier, the picture was exhibited in the building of the Institute.

Gafuri enjoyed observing nature, sitting on a large flat rock, which lay where the monument to Salavat Yulaev in Ufa is situated today. This very moment is depicted in a painting by the artist Valery Baldin. The place where Gafuri is sitting was quite remarkable — it is reflected in many works. About this very stone another people’s poet of Bashkortostan Mustai Karim wrote a poem. He created it in 1940 and dedicated it to Majit Gafuri:

Gafuri was first in Ufa in 1896, he left his native village to enroll at the ‘Gusmaniya’ madrassa, a higher Muslim educational institution. However, the future poet’s family could not afford it, and he was forced to return to his village. From 1906 to 1908, Gafuri was a student of the famous madrassa “Galiya” in Ufa, and after the October Revolution he was an active public worker — he put a lot of efforts to organize an independent press in the Bashkir Republic, collected and studied local folklore and stood up for the autonomy of national culture. In 1923, the writer’s contributions to preservation of national values were noted by Bashkir central executive committee — he was awarded a title of people’s poet of Bashkir ASSR.

After Gafuri’s death in 1934, a memorial museum was opened in his house in Ufa, where he lived with his family. There, the poet lived the last eleven years of his life, and that is where many of his famous works were born. There is a monument to the poet in front of the theater named after him.