N/A. STEPAN SEMIONOVICH SHCHUKIN, 1758-1828 signed in Latin and dated 1806 oil on canvas PROVENANCE Acquired in 1807 for the first Earl of Malmesbury by his secretary James Tyrrell Ross White while employed in Lord Granville's Embassy at St. Petersburg Private English Collection, since 1987 LITERATURE AND REFERENCES Antoine Cheneviere, Russian Furniture, The Golden Age, 1780-1840, Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1988, ill. CATALOGUE NOTE This grand yet intimate cabinet portrait depicts Emperor Alexander I standing at ease in full army uniform of the Imperial Preobrazhensky Regiment. In t
N/A. STEPAN SEMIONOVICH SHCHUKIN, 1758-1828 signed in Latin and dated 1806 oil on canvas PROVENANCE Acquired in 1807 for the first Earl of Malmesbury by his secretary James Tyrrell Ross White while employed in Lord Granville's Embassy at St. Petersburg Private English Collection, since 1987 LITERATURE AND REFERENCES Antoine Cheneviere, Russian Furniture, The Golden Age, 1780-1840, Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1988, ill. CATALOGUE NOTE This grand yet intimate cabinet portrait depicts Emperor Alexander I standing at ease in full army uniform of the Imperial Preobrazhensky Regiment. In the background is Kammenostrovsky Island Palace, built for the Tsar while he was still a boy, to be his future St. Petersburg residence. His pose directly recalls the famous portrait of his father, Emperor Paul I, painted ten years previously by Shchukin (see fig. 1). The offered lot is said to be one of several similar versions, one being in the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, and another in the Queen’s collection, England. Stepan Shchukin was an orphan who learned to draw while living in a hospice for homeless children in Moscow in the mid 1760s. Despite these humble beginnings, a combination of talent and effort earned him a place at the Imperial Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg, where he studied portraiture under Dmitri Levitsky. There he won a scholarship to continue his studies in Paris from 1782-6 where he received further instruction from the court painter Alexander Roslin. He returned to Russia in 1786 and within two years took over from his former tutor as head of the portraiture department at the Academy. In 1797 he became a full member for his portrait of Paul I (fig 1). From 1804-1812 he worked together with his contemporary Borovikovsky on the interior decoration of the Kazan Cathedral in St. Petersburg. He is considered to be, after Levitsky and Borovikovsky one of the best portraitists in Russia of his time and fostered a new generation in his wak 81 A
Size: 1871px × 2672px
Photo credit: © The Picture Art Collection / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., /, /., 1806.
