Alexander II, Tsar of Russia, is shown with his head and shoulders to the right in the uniform of a Russian General. He wears the collar of St Andrew, the ribbon and star of St George and the badge of the Order 'Pour La Mérite'. His smaller badges include those of St George, St Andrew and Maria Theresa.

Liberally educated and less formidable than his father, Nicholas I, whom he succeeded in 1855, he initiated the reforms which led to the emancipation of the serfs in 1861; but he was by nature conservative and autocratic. Increasing revolutionary activity towards the end of his reign led to a number of unsuccessful attempts on his life before his assassination on 1 March 1881.

This portrait is one of a pair with the portrait of Maria Alexandrovna, Tsarina of Russia (RCIN 404902). The inference from inscriptions on the backs of these portraits is that they were copied, in Russia, from originals painted by Von Angeli in 1874. The copies were presumably made for Queen Victoria, who had been visited by the Tsar and Tsarina in May 1874, when she had been distressed by his appearance: 'so old, sad, and careworn.' Early in 1885 it was reported that two copies of heads of the (late) Tsar and Tsarina had been made for the Queen in Russia; the Duke of Edinburgh, their son-in-law, asked that the cheque in payment should be sent to him for forwarding; and the sum of £109 was paid by the Lord Chamberlain's Department in March 1885. The frame is by Brooks.