Portrait of Alexander Borisovich Fock

“Portrait of Alexander Borisovich Fock” - a painting by Thomas Wright from the Military Gallery of the Winter Palace.

Thomas Wright

Portrait of Alexander Borisovich Fock . 1835 year

Canvas, oil. 70 × 62.5 cm

State Hermitage Museum , St. Petersburg

( inv. GE-7944 )

The picture is a chest portrait of Lieutenant General Alexander Borisovich Fock from the Military Gallery of the Winter Palace ^[1] .

By the beginning of the Patriotic War of 1812, Major General Fok was the chief of staff of the Finnish Corps and was in Sveaborg , from where he arrived by sea first to Revel and then to Riga . He fought in the Baltic provinces against the corps of Marshal MacDonald , and then in Belarus, for the difference in the second battle of Polotsk, he was promoted to lieutenant general . After the battle on Berezina, he participated in the pursuit of the remains of the defeated Great Army to Koenigsberg , but there, due to his illness, he was forced to leave the army and did not take part in military operations against Napoleon ^[2] .

Depicted in a general's uniform introduced for infantry generals on May 7, 1817. On the left on the chest is a star of the Order of St. Anne of the 1st degree; on the neck there is a cross of the Order of St. George of the 3rd class; on board the uniform are crosses of the orders of St. Vladimir of the 2nd degree and the Prussian Red Eagle of the 1st degree; a silver medal “In memory of the Patriotic War of 1812” on the St. Andrew’s ribbon and stars of the orders of St. Vladimir of the 2nd degree and the Red Eagle of the 1st degree on the right on the chest ^[3] . Signature on the frame: A. B. Fon-Fok, General Lieutenant .

On August 7, 1820, the Fock Attestation Committee of the General Staff was included in the list of “generals who were in the battles who were not included in the gallery lists because they were not forwarded to the Committee for consideration,” respectively, his portrait was not commissioned by D. Dow ^{[4 ]} .

Fock died in the spring of 1825, and 9 years later, on August 27, 1834, a petition was sent to his daughter Charlotte in the name of Emperor Nicholas I : “My father’s faces are not among the faithful sons of Russia. The reason for this was his disagreement with the late Count Arakcheyev ... Command, the justice monarch, after copying the copy from the portrait attached hereto, put it in the gallery of the generals and thereby console his family, repaying the hero who participated in more than 30 battles ” (the petition was sent all four months after the death of Arakcheev himself). Initially, this request came to the Minister of the Imperial Court, Prince P.M. Volkonsky , who handed it to the Minister of War Count A.I. Chernyshev , respectively, Chernyshev reported to him to Emperor Nicholas I. On December 2 of the same year, the highest deign followed the placement of the portrait of Lieutenant General Fock at the Military Gallery . The order for the portrait was given to Dow's son-in-law Thomas Wright , who was in St. Petersburg at that time and was organizing the affairs of the deceased Dow, including completing the unfinished Dow portraits for the Military Gallery. On March 12, 1835, the prototype portrait was returned to Charlotte Fock, on December 11 of that year, Wright was paid a fee of 500 rubles, and on December 14 he transferred the finished portrait to the Hermitage ^[4] .

Since this portrait turned out to be “unscheduled” and there was no space for it in the gallery, the question arose - where to put it? On December 30, 1835, the court marshal, Prince N. V. Dolgorukov, wrote to P. M. Volkonsky: “in whose place against the previous appointment it will be allowed to put a portrait of General Fock and then change the name on the frame” . December 31, Volkonsky replied that the portrait of Fock should be placed in place of an empty frame intended for a portrait of Lieutenant General Prince A.V. Siberian . Siberian himself at that time was under investigation for abuse of service and in the summer of 1834 was dismissed. Earlier, on November 14, 1833, Emperor Nicholas I ordered the suspension of the writing of his portrait ^[5] . Thus, the portrait of Fock was placed in the Military Gallery in the place reserved for the portrait of Siberian. The bronze tablet on the frame with the name of Fock was engraved by A. Schreiber, who was paid 35 rubles for this ^[4] .

A miniature by M. Fremy was used as a prototype portrait. At the beginning of the 20th century, it belonged to the grandson of Fock, General A. D. Shepelev, and was published in the publication of Grand Duke Nikolai Mikhailovich “ Russian Portraits of the 18th and 19th Centuries ” ^[6] . The current location of the prototype miniature has not been established.

The guardian of British painting in the Hermitage, E. P. Renne, put forward the version that Wright could use a drawing by L. de Saint-Aubin ^[3] . This picture is mirrored in relation to Wright’s work, Fock is depicted in it in the general general double-breasted uniform of the 1808 model and with a shoulder strap ^[7] ; in general, it has less similarity with the miniature of M. Fremy. The drawing is also stored in the Hermitage (inventory number ERR 6164).

In the 1840s, a lithography was made in the workshop of I. P. Pesotsky based on a drawing from a gallery portrait, published in the book “Emperor Alexander I and His Companions” and subsequently repeatedly reproduced ^[8] .

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  Thumbnail by M. Fremy

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  Phototype from the drawing by L. De Saint-Aubin