The lithograph “The Grave of A.S. Pushkin”, created by Ivan Abramovich Klyukvin, is on display at the State Pushkin Museum. It depicts the original view of the poet’s grave before the monument was constructed. The lithograph was based on the drawing by the Russian artist Pyotr Fyodorovich Sokolov, a pioneer of the Russian watercolor portrait genre.

Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin died on January 29 (February 10) in 1837, in his St. Petersburg residence at 12 Moika River Embankment. On the morning of February 6 (18) that same year, he was laid to rest at the Svyatogorsky Monastery in Pskov Governorate, in the cemetery of the Hannibal-Pushkin family.

In the spring of 1837, upon the request of his widow Natalia Nikolayevna, preparations began for the construction of a monument at the grave of Alexander Pushkin. Friends of the poet and custodians commissioned and collected drawings of the general view of the burial site, as well as its detailed descriptions. Four years after the body of the poet was interred, in 1841, a monument was erected at Pushkin’s grave at the Svyatogorsky Monastery. On a black marble pedestal stands an urn covered with a veil, atop which is a vault with a tall obelisk made of white marble. The monument was made by the Saint Petersburg sculptor Alexander Permagorov. The identity of the designer is unknown, though it is possible that it may have been Vasily Zhukovsky. The inscription on the memorial reads,