Jean-Louis Voille, Portrait of Count Pavel Alexandrovich Stroganov, 1792
Signed in Latin letters and dated at middle right
Oil on canvas
23 1/4 x 18 1/2 in. (59.1 x 47 cm)
Inv. no. ab_31537
French painter Jean-Louis Voille (1744–1806) made his fortune as a painter of portraits of members of the Russian Imperial family and the nobility. Unlike his competitor Elisabeth Vigée Lebrun (1755–1842), however, his career has not received the same acclaim or attention. Voille was born into the family of a Paris jeweler in 1744 and by 1765 was studying at the Académie Royale, where he was sponsored by and living with his instructor, François–Hubert Drouais (1727–1775). He arrived in St. Petersburg around 1770, one of the first of several extended periods spent there, and quickly found patrons, eventually to include the “young court” of Grand Duke Pavel Petrovich, the future Emperor Paul I, and his wife Maria Feodorovna. He was later granted the status of Court Painter (Pridvornyi zhivopisets) by the young couple.
The sitter for this painting, Count Pavel Stroganov (1774–1817), was born in Paris while his parents Count Alexander Stroganov (1733–1811) and his wife Ekaterina (née Trubetskaya, 1754–1815) were resident at the French court. The painter and young count met while Stroganov was still a teenager. His father, who was a longtime President of the Imperial Academy of Arts as well as a prominent art collector, commissioned a number of portraits of his son. Jean-Baptiste Greuze’s touching depiction of the child at the age of four (Hermitage Museum) is followed by Voille’s portrait of Stroganov as a young teenager and aide-de-camp to Grigory Potemkin (Private Collection). This 1792 portrait, the second by Voille, was followed slightly thereafter by a more informal image with unpowdered hair by Vigée-Lebrun (Hermitage Museum). This latter work was less successful for its combination of a casual pose and dress with oddly mannered, delicate hands and awkward proportions.
The paintings of the early 1790s were made after Stroganov was forced to return from an educational sojourn under somewhat politically delicate circumstances. His father had engaged French politician and mathematician Gilbert Romme (1750–1795) as his tutor. They had undertaken an educational tour throughout Europe accompanied by the former Stroganov serf and future architect Andrei Voronikhin (1759–1814). Romme and Stroganov’s final trip to Paris in 1789, during the early months of the French Revolution, led to the young man’s unceremonious recall to Russia. While in Paris he had joined the Jacobin Club and Romme’s Société des amis de la loi (Society of Friends of the Law). The young count was sent to stay at his mother’s home at Brattsevo. (His parents had by now separated in light of his mother’s liaison with Ivan Rimsky-Korsakov.)
Voille painted this 1792 portrait during or shortly after Stroganov’s “exile” at Brattsevo. During the same year, Voille was engaged in painting a series of portraits of the eldest four children of the future emperor, including the future Alexander I, with whom Stroganov would become close friends. As was the case with so many of his works, Voille isolated the figure of the young count in an indeterminate space rather than in some romantic landscape or in an artificially studious pose at a desk. Instead, we see a fresh-faced, yet mature young man of eighteen who had already witnessed much of what Europe’s universities had to offer as well as the political conflagrations which would lead to the Napoleonic Wars.
Pavel Stroganov went on to occupy a privileged position at the court of Alexander I and rapidly advanced, becoming one of the emperor’s trusted advisors on military and diplomatic affairs. He fought throughout the Napoleonic Wars and, tragically, witnessed the death of his only son at the Battle of Craonne in 1814. Pavel Alexandrovich Stroganov died in 1817.
Provenance:
Count Pavel Alexandrovich Stroganov
Inherited by the widow of the above, Countess Sofia Vladimirovna Stroganova (née Princess Golitsyna, 1775–1845), Mar'ino
Inherited by the second daughter of the above, Princess Adelaida Pavlovna Golitsyna (née Stroganova, 1799–1882), Mar'ino
Inherited from the above by Prince Pavel Pavlovich Golitsyn (1856–1914), Mar'ino
Possibly inherited from the above by Prince Sergei Pavlovich Golitsyn (1898–1938)*
Nationalized by the Soviet government?
Sotheby’s, Important Old Master Paintings, May 19, 1995, lot 114
Collection of Nicholas Randolph Burke (1942–2017)
Exhibited:
St. Petersburg, Tauride Palace, 1905. “Istoriko-khudozhestvennaia vystavka russkikh portretov,” no. 469.
Published:
Grand Duke Nikolai Mikhailovich, Graf Pavel Aleksandrovich Stroganov (1774–1817): istoricheskoe izsliedovanie epokhi Imperatora Aleksandra I (St. Petersburg: Ekspeditsiia zagotovleniia gosudarstvennykh bumag, 1903), vol. II, p. 340 (illustrated).
Katalog sostoiashchei pod Vysochaishim ego imperatorskago velichestva Gosudaria Imperatora pokrovitelʹstvom istoriko-khudozhestvennoi vystavki russkikh portretov ustraivaemoi v Tavricheskom dvortsie, v polʹzu vdov i sirot pavshikh v boiu voinov (St. Petersburg, 1905), no. 469, p. 5.
Baron N. Vrangel', “Dva portretista XVIII veka,” Russkaia starina May 1907, p. 349.
Denis Roche, “Neskol'ko zamechanii o Vuale i o Viollie (Quelques précisions sur Jean Louis Voille et accessoirement sur Henri François Gabriel Viollier),” Starye gody October 1909, p. 585.
Denis Roche, via M. Michel Vitry, “Acte de bâpteme du peintre Jean-Louis Voille,” Bulletin de la Société de l’histoire de l’art français. Publication Trimestrielle. Année 1909, 1er fascicule (Paris: Jean Schemit, 1909), pp. 114-116.
Denis Roche, “Jean-Louis Voille, peintre de portraits,” La Renaissance de l'art français et des industries de luxe 1921, pp. 495-497 (illustrated).
L. Iu. Rudneva, “Zhan-Lui Vual' v Rossii,” avtoreferat for dissertation, Moscow State University named for Lomonosov, Moscow, 1994.
* Prince Pavel Pavlovich Golitsyn was forced to sell some paintings from the collections at Mar'ino in order to pay for the estate’s upkeep. In 1921, Denis Roche published the portrait and described it as being in the collection of Prince Pavel, who had died in 1914. This might indicate that as of 1921, it remained in the collection of his descendants.