Paul I, Tsar of Russia (1754-1801) was the only child of Peter III and Catherine the Great whom he succeeded as tsar of Russia in 1796. His first wife was Wilhelmina of Hesse-Darmstadt (Natalia Alexeievna) whom he married in 1773. His second marriage, in 1775, was to Sophia Dorothea of Württtemburg (Maria Feodorovna). The sitter is depicted frankly, his strabismus evident in the drooping of his left eye. An unhappy man, considered despotic by many, Paul I suffered a sudden death, murdered in his bedroom in St Michael’s Castle in 1801.

Paul is depicted wearing the uniform of the Preobrazhensky Regiment, a dark blue coat with a scarlet collar. Prominent is the Order of St Andrew and the badge of St Anne, hanging on a red and yellow ribbon. The visible badge of the Order of St Anne suggests that this miniature was painted after 1797, as the sitter incorporated the order into the Russian awarding system at the time of his coronation in 1797. The painting, signed on the right ‘Gerik’, perhaps by a descendant of the German engraver, Johann Ernst Gericke (active 1744–69), who engraved a number of royal portraits, including Frederick the Great, Catherine the Great, and George III and Queen Charlotte. This portrait appears to derive from a number of earlier depictions of the sitter, notably those by French painter Jean-Louise Voille of 1789, and Stepan Shchukin (1762–1828), c.1796/7, now in the Hermitage.

The miniature is signed on the right, over his shoulder: Gerik.

Text adapted from Russia: Art, Royalty and the Romanovs, London, 2018.