Fyodor Rokotov

He studied art in Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts. After buying back his freedom at the end of the 1750s he became established as a fashionable painter. In 1765, Rokotov was elected an Academician, but he did not work as a professor in the Academy long, because it interfered with his painting. He returned to Moscow in 1765, where he lived for the rest of his life. He had a lot of commissions there, becoming one of the best portrait painters of his time. Among his best-known portraits are Portrait of Alexandra Struyskaya (1772), sometimes called the Russian Mona Lisa and admittedly the most celebrated piece of the 18th-century Russian painting; Portrait of Countess Elisabeth Santi (1785), and Lady in a Pink Dress (1770s, illustration, right). Rokotov avoided painting formal portraits with much adornment and decoration. Instead he was one of the first Russian painters advancing a psychological portrait with attention to optical and atmospheric effects.

• Illustration — Emperor Paul I as a Child. 1761 • Illustration — Count I. G. Orlov. c.1762-1765 • Illustration — Catherine II, 1770 • Illustration — Alexandra Struyskaya. 1772 • Illustration — Ivan Shuvalov 1760 • Illustration — Anna Yuryevna Kvashnina-Samarina. 1770s • Illustration — Princess Darya Gruzinskaya, late 1700s • Illustration — Lady in a White Cap. 1790s • Illustration — Countess Anna Buturlina, c. 1793. • Illustration — Nikita Ivanovich Panin,1760s

The authorities additionally record the headings Fedor Stepanovič Rokotov, Fjodor Stepanokitsch Rokotoff, Fyodor Stepanovich Rokotov, Fedor Stepanovich Rokotov and Fjodor Stepanowitsch Rokotoff. His recorded language was Russian.