Son of Johann Graf von Fries and Anna d'Escheray and younger brother of the collector Josef von Fries (1765-1788), the Count was born in Vienna and studied at Leipzig in 1797-8. On 15 October 1800 he married Maria Theresia Josepha, daughter of Carl Albrecht Fürst zu Hohenlohe-Waldenburg-Schillingsfürst and Judith Baronesse Reviczky de Revisnye, also of Vienna. In 1801 he was appointed an honorary member and extraordinary councillor of the Academy of his native city and the present picture of him and his new wife was presumably painted there, although Mosnier seems to have moved from Hamburg to St. Petersburg in that year. For an account of von Fries' notable collection of drawings see F. Lugt, Les Marques de Collections, Amsterdam, 1921, under no. 2903