Lot 276: Joseph Friedrich August Darbes (Hamburg 1747 -

Joseph Friedrich August Darbes (Hamburg 1747 - 1810 Berlin) Portrait of a Russian aristocrat, oil on canvas, 63 x 47.5 cm, original carved and gilded frame, (Wo) This extraordinarily realistic Neo-Classicist portrait was executed during the artist's ten-year stay in St. Petersburg and in the Balkans. Born in Hamburg as the son of a French art dealer, he was trained at the Academy in Copenhagen, where he was a student of the Danish court painter Carl Gustav Pilo. Following his studies in Europe and a sojourn in Poland, he lived in St. Petersburg between 1773 and 1785, where he advanced to a popular portraitist among the aristocracy. This is also attested to by the full-length portraits of the future czar Paul Christiansborg (Czar Paul I) and his wife Maria Feodorovna, today at Christiansborg Castle (Thieme-Becker, vol. VIII, p. 392). Besides German and Russian aristocrats, his commissioners also included intellectuals, such as Moses Mendelsohn and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Thieme-Becker, ibidem). is contemporaries valued particularly the naturalism displayed in his portraits. Darbes returned to Berlin in 1785, where he executed several portraits of King Frederick William II and was considered to be one of the best portraitists of his time. RUSSISCHER SATZ!!!! Pendant to following lot