Portrait of Nikolai Alexandrovich Chicherin

“Portrait of Nikolai Alexandrovich Chicherin” - a painting by George Dow and his workshop from the Military Gallery of the Winter Palace.

George Dow and the workshop

Portrait of Nikolai Alexandrovich Chicherin . Around 1823-1825

Canvas, oil. 70 × 62.5 cm

State Hermitage Museum , St. Petersburg

( inv. GE-7918 )

The picture is a chest portrait of Major General Nikolai Alexandrovich Chicherin from the Military Gallery of the Winter Palace ^[1] .

During the Patriotic War of 1812, Major General Chicherin was retired and with the outbreak of hostilities arrived in the 1st Western Army as a volunteer, participated in several rear-guard battles with the French, and after the battle near Smolensk he was enlisted for active service with the appointment of the great Prince Konstantin Pavlovich . At the end of 1812, in one of the skirmishes with the French, he fell off his horse and broke his leg, as a result of which he left the army. He returned to duty in the midst of the Overseas Campaign of 1813 , but was soon again seriously wounded, was being treated in Carlsbad and managed to prevent the escape of Russian captivity by the French general M. M. Klapared ^[2] .

Depicted in a general's uniform introduced for cavalry generals on April 6, 1814. On the neck there is a cross of the Order of St. Vladimir of the 3rd degree; on board the uniform is the cross of the Prussian Order of Pur le Merit ; on the right on the chest there is a cross of the Order of St. George of the 4th class and a silver medal "In Memory of the Patriotic War of 1812" on the St. Andrew's Ribbon . On the back of the picture is an inscription: Tchitcherin ^[3] . Signature on the frame: N. A. Chicherin 1st, General Mayor .

Despite the fact that on August 7, 1820, the Chicherin Committee of the General Staff for Attestation was included in the list of “generals whose portraits the Committee does not dare to draw conclusions” because “in 1812 he was in different battles without a command at the forefront” , the actual decision the writing of his portrait was taken earlier, since the Dow fee for this work was paid on February 18 and March 10, 1820. However, the portrait was painted much later - as it follows from the letter of Chicherin himself to the Inspectorate Department of the Ministry of War of February 12, 1823, which says: “For three years now, as obsessed with diseases that prevent me from taking any trip, they deprive me of the hope of ever being in Petersburg , but in order to fulfill the sovereign’s will, so flattering for a Russian officer, he invited the painter to take off his portrait, as soon as it was finished I would deliver it to Mr. Dove for removal from this copy when he was in Petersburg . " The finished portrait was taken to the Hermitage on September 7, 1825 ^[4] . The prototype portrait is unknown to modern researchers.