‘The Portrait of P.S. Stroganov’ was painted by Karl Brullov, an author of historical compositions, genre pictures and monumental paintings. The artist painted the portrait in Italy in 1850. He pursued the style of romanticism: the movement that required depicting the inner world and emotional stress of the character.

The Portrait of P.S. Stroganov is an example of ‘Late Brullov’ painting. 1. The painter imparted the 27-year-old diplomat a romantic and slightly museful look. For that he used laconic means and methods of painting: contrasts of light and shade, expression of strokes and expressiveness of the manner of execution.

Count Pavel Stroganov, the Chief Cup Bearer of the Imperial Court, was one of the four sons of the famous entrepreneur of the 18th century. Having graduated from the Moscow University in 1845, Stroganov worked in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, then in the Russian Mission to Rome and the Embassy in Vienna. In 1857 he was made a Collegiate Counsellor; at about the same time Stroganov obtained possession of the Znamenskoye estate. The Count used the estate as his summer residence and very soon it became one of the cultural centers of the Tambov Governorate. The Znamenskoye estate housed paintings, sculptures and items of applied arts that Stroganov started to collect in Europe: in Italy he used to buy not only the Old Masters, but also works by contemporary Russian artists: Silvester Shchedrin, Leo Lagorio, Fyodor Vasilyev and Karl Brullov.

Stroganov’s treasures were also stored in his St. Petersburg mansion. The latest acquisitions of the aristocratic collector date back to 1870s. Under his will, after his death his heirs donated the best eight paintings from his mansion to the Imperial Hermitage, while others were moved over to the Stroganov Palace in the Nevsky Avenue.

After the 1917 revolution, paintings from Pavel Stroganov’s collection made their way to collections of various Russian museums, such as: The Hermitage, the Russian Museum, the A.S. Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, the Tretyakov Gallery, the Simferopol Picture Gallery, etc. In May 1931, 256 items from the Stroganov Palace were sold at the Rudolph Lepke Auction in Berlin. The major part of the items of the Znamenskoye estate was included into the collection of the Tambov Regional Picture Gallery.