Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin recites his poem before Gavrila Derzhavin during the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum exam on January 8th, 1815.

Repin painted this monumental scene in 1911, a century after the actual event it depicts: the young Alexander Pushkin reciting a poem before Gavrila Derzhavin, the greatest Russian poet of the eighteenth century, during examinations at the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum on 8 January 1815. Derzhavin is said to have wept and declared that he was witnessing the birth of a great poet. The scene had become mythologised in Russian cultural memory as the moment of legitimate succession in Russian poetry, and Repin's painting was produced at a time when Pushkin's status as the founding father of Russian literature was unassailable. Repin himself, then in his late sixties and living at his Finnish estate Penates, painted this as an act of cultural homage. The canvas is held by the National Pushkin Museum in St. Petersburg, an institution dedicated precisely to the poet's memory.

Repin organises the large composition around the two principals — the reciting boy and the listening old man — within a crowd of onlookers who form a responsive audience. Light is directed toward Pushkin to emphasise his centrality. The late handling is somewhat looser than Repin's mid-career work, with broader passages in the background crowd. Costume and setting are researched for historical accuracy.