This publication was prepared in memory of Prince Grigory Grigoryevich Gagarin, a diplomat, a public figure, and a former vice-president of the Academy of Arts. It is an unusual way to pay tribute to a man well known for his passion for Byzantine iconography and highly academic painting style. 

The cover of the book shows a self-portrait of Prince Grigory Grigorievich Gagarin (1810–1893), who gives a drawing lesson to his grandson. The publishers of the book set the task of releasing posthumously little-known works of the prince. He received unfairly little recognition as a children’s artist, since everyone knew him as a diplomat, and recognized his military merits and successes in the court service. For a long time he was vice-president of the Russian Academy of Arts, then he served for some time in Tiflis, Georgia, where he built and painted the theater building, which later burned down. He contributed a lot to the improvement of pension support for retired artists. He was actively involved in charity. Together with his wife, he opened a school for rural children in his Karacharovo estate.

The proponents of the publication decided to accompany the prince’s drawings with stories by junior students of the Eight-grade Commercial School in Lesnoye.

The Commercial School was founded with the active participation of the son of Grigory Grigorievich, Andrey Grigorievich Gagarin, the first director of the Polytechnic Institute, located here in Lesnoye. The school became one of the first educational institutions where boys and girls studied together. The curriculum followed the Tenishevsky School model. The fact that children’s stories were published next to the works of a great man shows how much the teachers valued child creativity. (The subject that was widely discussed in pedagogical and parental circles at the time.)

Another non-profit society was founded in Lesnoye — the “People”s Entertainment Society of Lesnoye”, headed by Maria Dmitrievna Gagarina, the wife of Andrey Grigorievich Gagarin. It is noteworthy that the People’s Entertainment Society was a non-governmental initiative aiming to organize local residents’ cultural leisure. The library played a big role as a form of entertainment. The adult library was fee-based, while the children’s library was free of charge. Prince Andrey Grigoryevich Gagarin pledged personal responsibility for both of these institutions. These were exactly the needs that the proceeds from the release of the book ‘Children”s Stories for Grandfather’s Pictures’ were to fund.