Portrait of Aurore Demidoff-Karamzine with her son, seated on a balcony

The sitter, whose maiden name is Stjernvall, was born in Finland in 1808. She became lady-in-waiting of Empress Alexandra Fedorovna the Elder and married Prince Paul Demidoff (1798-1840). Six years after the death of her first husband, she married a Russian officer, Colonel Andrey Karamzin, who died in the Crimean War in 1854. She returned to Finland, where she became a well-known philanthropist until her death in 1902. The child in the present lot is her only child, Prince Paul Demidoff (1839-1885).