Lot 201: Petr Semenovich Drozhdin (1745/49-1805)

Portrait of the Empress Catherine II of Russia (1729-1796), half-length, in travelling costume, wearing the star of the Russian Order of St. Andrew
signed in cyrillic and dated 'K. Petr Drozhdin 1797' [Copied by] Petr Drozhdin 1797]
oil on canvas
28 1/8 x 21 3/4 in. (71.3 x 55.2 cm.)

Presumably presented to Sir Charles Whitworth, K.B., subsequently 1st Earl Whitworth, G.C.B., P.C. (1752-1825), when Envoy Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the Imperial Court (1788-1800), and by whom bequeathed to his widow
Arabella, Duchess of Dorset (1767-1825), widow of John Frederick Sackville, 3rd Duke of Dorset, K.G., P.C. (1745-1799), Knole Park, Kent, and by family inheritance at Knole (recorded in a mss. Catalogue of Pictures at Knole taken in 1828, no. 508, in the Venetian Bedroom, 'Portrait of the Empress Catharine of Russia'), through her daughter by her first marriage
Lady Elizabeth Sackville, subsequently Sackville-West, and from 1864 Baroness Buckhurst in her own right (1795-1870), wife of George, 5th Earl De La Warr, P.C. (1791-1869), to their younger son
Hon. Mortimer Sackville-West, subsequently 1st Baron Sackville of Knole (1820-1888), Knole Park, Kent, and by descent.

The Property of the Trustees of the Knole Second Trust Fund (LOT 201)

The present lot is a copy after the painting by Mikhail Shibanov (active second half 18th Century) of 1787, now in the Russian Museum, St. Petersburg. Dated 1797, the present picture is a posthmous portrait of Catherine II, who had died the year before in 1796. Drozhdin had begun his studies in the icon painting workshop of the Troitso-Sergeev Monastery, then under A.P. Antropov in St. Petersburg, and was later a student of D.G. Levitskii. He was accepted into the Academy of Arts in 1776, and elected Academician in 1785. His use of an established prototype seems to have been a standard working practice for the artist; portraits by him are known of Paul I and his wife, Maria Feodorovna, as well as of Catherine II from 1787 and 1788, all of which are versions of prototypes by Shibanov.

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