The portrait of Grigory Vasilyevich Tetyushinov, a merchant of the first guild, was created in 2013 by the Astrakhan artist Alexander Yurievich Davitiyan. It was painted from a single photograph of the merchant Tetyushinov taken in the photographic studio of Anton Stepanovich Murenko, the owner of several salons in Saratov, Nizhny Novgorod and Samara in the 1860s. Tetyushinov was photographed in one of these ateliers when he made business trips to the Volga cities.

Grigory Vasilyevich Tetyushinov was born into a bourgeois family in Astrakhan in 1826. In January 1850, he became a merchant and engaged in commercial activities. Four years later, he established the Tetyushinov and Co steamship company and started cargo transportation on the Volga River.

It was then that he founded the first iron shipbuilding yard in Astrakhan, where he produced steamships and barges with metal hulls. Although such vessels were much more expensive than wooden ones, they were distinguished by their longer service life. The wooden hulls of steamships quickly came into disrepair as a result of the operation of steam engines and propeller wheels.

On December 12, 1872, Tetyushinov was granted hereditary honorary citizenship for 20 years of his irreproachable service in the first merchant guild. This status had an advantage over the title of merchant: it was hereditary and allowed to obtain various personal and property rights. Thus, honorary citizens were exempt from per capita tax, recruitment duty, corporal punishment, and had the right to participate in elections to the city government and be elected to city public offices. Merchants also had the right to describe themselves in all questionnaires as honorary citizens in addition to the guild specification.

In the second half of the 19th century Tetyushinov was actively engaged in charity and public activities. In the 1850s–1860s he was repeatedly elected an honorary member of the Trusteeship of Children’s Shelters, and served as director of the Nikolaevsky children’s shelter.

In 1879–1890, Grigory Vasilievich was a member of the City Duma, thus he had the casting vote right. In 1882–1884 he was the foreman of the Exchange Committee.

During 40 years of his business activity, Tetyushinov, in addition to shipbuilding and transportation, was engaged in fishing, wine trade and oil refining.