Russian Portraits in Watercolour (1825-1855)

As early as the eighteenth century, portrait painting as a genre was unusually advanced in Russia. Among the many foreign artists who were invited there during the period architects, sculptors and goldsmiths as well as painters the majority of painters specialized in portraits. Under their influence a Russian school of portrait painting grew up, counting among its numbers artists such as Nikitin, Argunov and Rokotov, and later Levitzky and Borovikovsky. From that time, court portraiture in Russia was to eclipse in importance all other genres, whether seascapes, landscapes or still lives. This work reveals for the first time a large number of paintings - chiefly portraits of contemporaries of Pushkin - taken from one of the most significant and important private collections of Russian watercolor portraits of the nineteenth century. It is of exceptional interest not only for the quality of the works reproduced, but also for the great variety of both artists and subjects represented.