The oil painting collection of the National Pushkin Museum includes a portrait of Maria Nikolaevna Volkonskaya by an unknown artist.

Maria Nikolaevna Volkonskaya, one of the daughters of General Nikolay Raevsky, married Major General Prince Sergey Grigoryevich Volkonsky in January 1825. A year later, he was arrested as a Decembrist and sentenced to 20 years of hard labor. Volkonskaya followed her husband to Siberia.

Maria Volkonskaya wrote about Pushkin and his first trip, which he made with the Raevsky family in the summer of 1820, “I remember how during this trip, not far from Taganrog, I was riding in a carriage with Sophia, our Englishwoman, as well as our Russian nanny and governess. When we saw the sea, we ordered to stop, got out of the carriage and rushed to admire the sea with the entire party. It was covered with waves, and, not suspecting that the poet was following us, I began to amuse myself by running after the wave, and when it came close to me, I ran away from it. Pushkin found that this picture was very graceful, and, poetizing a childish prank, wrote charming poems; I was only 15 years old at the time: