Lot 30: Georg Christoph Grooth, 1716-1749 , Grand Duke Petr Fedorovich on horseback oil on canvas

oil on canvas

66 by 56cm., 26 by 22in.

L.A. Markina, Izuchenie tvorcheskogo naslediya G. Kh. Grota. Issledovanie. Restavratsiya. VNIIR, Moscow, 1983. No.8 (38), p.87.L.A. Markina Portretist Georg Khristof Groot i nemetskie zhivopistsy v Rossii serediny XVIII veka, Moscow, 1999, pp.153-155, 226-227.

Georg Christoph Grooth studied with his father, J. C. Grooth (1687-1764), a Stuttgart court artist and curator of the gallery at Ludwigsburg. He travelled to Revell (Tallinn) where he was recommended to the Princess Regent, Anna Leopoldovna, and in 1741 was employed as a painter to the Russian court, a contract which continued under Empress Elizabeth I. Grooth was instrumental in founding the first picture gallery in Tsarskoe Selo and in 1748-1749 he completed icons for the Church of the Ascension in Tsarskoe Selo. The well-known Russian painters Ivan Argunov and K Belyavsky were among his pupils. The Grand Duke is portrayed in the uniform of an officer of the Cuirassier Regiments with the Orders of St. Andrew (sash) and St. Anne (cross). In 1742, after the coronation of Empress Elizabeth I, Petr Fedorovich was promoted colonel of the Life Guards Curassier Regiment. Jacob Stählin, the Grand Duke's tutor in Russia, described him as "very pale, weak [and] with a tender disposition. His pale hair was styled in the Italian manner." (Ya. Shtelin. Zapiski o Petre, Utro: Literaturny i politichesky sbornik, Moscow 1868, p.315). This portrait is an excellent example of Rococo style. The composition has a gracious, slightly humorous feel, with the prancing equestrian figure in the foreground. In the background to the right are ranks of guardsmen, hinting at the Grand Duke's diversions. "He was 16 years old," Catherine II recalled in her Memoirs, "before a bout of smallpox he was handsome, but short and still very much a child. He spoke to me about the games and his soldiers with which he occupied himself from dusk till dawn." (Zapiski Ekateriny Vtoroi (Reprintnoe vosproizvedenie izdaniya 1907 goda) Moscow, 1989, p.44). Grooth harmoniously combines the best achievements of European art and the realia of the Russian court. The original equestrian portrait from 1742 is in the State Russian Museum, and a variant copy is in the State Tretyakov Gallery. The offered lot is considered to be another copy by the artist, and the short wig suggests a later composition, as such wigs came into fashion in the mid-1740s.