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Lot Essay
Fashionably – if modestly – dressed in a double-breasted brown riding coat and a large, wide-brimmed hat trimmed with fur and decorated with flowers, Elizaveta Alexandrovna, Baroness Stroganova appears in this elegant, sensitively painted portrait shortly before her marriage to Count Nikolai Nikitich Demidov (1773-1828), which took place in September 1795 when she was just sixteen. Demidov, a diplomat, settled with his new bride in Paris, where they became avid supporters of Napoleon. However, with the increasing animosity between France and Russia, the couple was soon forced to return to their native country. Following a short period in Italy, they moved to Moscow in 1812, where their second son Anatoly Nikolaievich Demidov, 1st Prince of San Donato (1813-1870) was born. Elizaveta was famed for her wit and beauty and her disposition became increasingly ill-suited to her more reserved husband. In 1812, the couple separated and Elizaveta returned alone to Paris where she remained until her death at the age of thirty-nine in 1818.
Jean-Louis Voille, having trained at the Académie Royale in Paris from 1758, is documented working in St. Petersberg from 1768, possibly at the instigation of Grand Duke Paul Petrovich Romanov, later Tsar Peter I (1754-1801). Here he pursued a long, prosperous career as a portraitist of leading members of Russian court society. After the outbreak of the Revolution in France and the increasingly anti-Revolutionary sentiment prevalent in Russia, Voille returned to Paris in 1795, remaining for a year and exhibiting at the Salon in 1796, before returning again to Russia in 1797. This portrait, as recorded by a label on the reverse, was formerly attributed to Elisabeth-Louise Vigée-Lebrun, but is in fact a characteristic example of the pictures that garnered Voille such attention in St. Petersburg’s society. The modelling of the face and the engaging way in which the sitter turns to the viewer are typical of the portrait types he produced during the early 1790s, before his return to France, evoking an air of discreet formality while still preserving the unique personality of his sitter. Voille appears to have painted two versions of this portrait, the other of which is now in the Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg (inv. no. GE-5724). It is possible that Voille was commissioned to paint two images of Elizaveta, one for the sitter’s father and the other for her husband.
The remarkable unbroken provenance of the present work saw the painting in several prestigious collections since its creation in the late 18th century, including that of Count Paul Nikolaevich Demidoff (1798-1840), Governor of Kursk, who was the brother of celebrated collector Anatole Demidoff, Prince of San Donato. The Demidoff collection at San Donato was famed for its outstanding examples of 19th-century paintings by artists including Delaroche, Delacroix, Bonington and Gericault.
Jean-Louis Voille, having trained at the Académie Royale in Paris from 1758, is documented working in St. Petersberg from 1768, possibly at the instigation of Grand Duke Paul Petrovich Romanov, later Tsar Peter I (1754-1801). Here he pursued a long, prosperous career as a portraitist of leading members of Russian court society. After the outbreak of the Revolution in France and the increasingly anti-Revolutionary sentiment prevalent in Russia, Voille returned to Paris in 1795, remaining for a year and exhibiting at the Salon in 1796, before returning again to Russia in 1797. This portrait, as recorded by a label on the reverse, was formerly attributed to Elisabeth-Louise Vigée-Lebrun, but is in fact a characteristic example of the pictures that garnered Voille such attention in St. Petersburg’s society. The modelling of the face and the engaging way in which the sitter turns to the viewer are typical of the portrait types he produced during the early 1790s, before his return to France, evoking an air of discreet formality while still preserving the unique personality of his sitter. Voille appears to have painted two versions of this portrait, the other of which is now in the Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg (inv. no. GE-5724). It is possible that Voille was commissioned to paint two images of Elizaveta, one for the sitter’s father and the other for her husband.
The remarkable unbroken provenance of the present work saw the painting in several prestigious collections since its creation in the late 18th century, including that of Count Paul Nikolaevich Demidoff (1798-1840), Governor of Kursk, who was the brother of celebrated collector Anatole Demidoff, Prince of San Donato. The Demidoff collection at San Donato was famed for its outstanding examples of 19th-century paintings by artists including Delaroche, Delacroix, Bonington and Gericault.