The art collection of the State Pushkin Museum includes a watercolor painting by Grigory Grigoryevich Chernetsov titled “Petersburg. Kamennoostrovsky Bridge.” Grigory Chernetsov (1802–1865) was one of the Chernetsov brothers and an academician of landscape painting at the Imperial Academy of Arts. In 1829, he was granted the title of court painter and received financial support from His Majesty’s Office.
The Chernetsov brothers were friends with Alexander Pushkin. A landscape painted by Nikanor Chernetsov in 1832, “The Darial Gorge, ” adorned Pushkin’s study. Additionally, a sketch of a portrait depicting Grigory Chernetsov made by Pushkin himself on the margins of his manuscript “Onegin’s Journey” has been preserved. In 1837, following the death of Pushkin, Vasily Andreyevich Zhukovsky commissioned the Chernetov brothers, Grigory and Nikanor, to create a painting in honor of the poet. It was titled “Alexander Pushkin in the Bakhchysarai Palace.”
In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, numerous country palaces were constructed on Krestovsky, Yelagin, Kamenny, and Aptekarsky islands for St. Petersburg’s aristocrats. These included the Stroganov, Kochubey, Vielgorsky, Beloselsky, Naryshkin, and Lopukhin families, among others. Parks were created around these residences, gazebos were erected, and boat trips with musicians playing rozhok horns were organized. Between 1811 and 1813, the first seven-span wooden arch bridge in Russia, built on a foundation of wooden piles and stone abutments, was constructed on the site of the former floating Kamennoostrovsky bridge over the Malaya Nevka River. This bridge connected Kamenny Island with Aptekarsky Island. It was designed by the engineer Agustín de Betancourt.
From May to September 1836, Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin leased a cottage on Kamenny Island. This is mentioned in Nadezhda Andreyevna Durova’s “Notes”. The cottage was located on the shore of the Bolshaya Nevka River, close to the summer residences of St. Petersburg’s nobility. On May 23, 1836, Natalia, Pushkin’s daughter, was born on Kamenny Island. During this time, Pushkin composed the poem “A monument, unforged, I for myself erected…”. He marked his draft manuscript with “1836 Aug. 21 Kam<enny> island.” Also on the island, he wrote the poem “When, lost in thought, I roam beyond the city’s bounds…”.
