Having begun life as a mezzotint engraver, George Dawe was much employed as a painter by Prince Leopold both at the time of his marriage (1816) and after; he worked also for the Duke and Duchess of Kent. Like Lawrence he was at Aix-la-Chapelle to paint the crowned heads assembled there for the Congress in 1818. He spent the years 1818-28 working for the Emperor Alexander I in St Petersburg, creating 336 portraits of those responsible for the defeat of Napoleon, housed in a specially-created gallery in the Winter Palace (the equivalent of the Waterloo Chamber). He died soon after his return to England in 1829.

Although this oil study was long considered the earliest image of the Emperor by Dawe, upon which he based many other portraits, recent conservation has revealed that it is painted on an engraving first published in March 1826. A label on the back of this painting by Dawe's brother Henry Edward states that it was painted in Russia and that it stayed with the artist till his death.

Alexander I is wearing the dark green uniform of Russian Field Marshal, decorated with various orders, most prominently the star of the Order of St Andrew surrounded by the Garter with the pendant sword of the Swedish Order of the Sword.