Footnotes

Provenance:
The Helfried Krug Collection, sold at Sotheby's, 15 November 1982, lot 511

Literature:
Alte und Moderne Kunst 13, (May-June 1968), fig.10
Brigitte Klesse, Helfried Krug Sammlung (1973), no.706
Paul von Lichtenberg, Mohn and Kothgasser (bilingual, 2009), p.285, pl.167

A very similar beaker painted with what is thought to be a Cossack is illustrated by von Lichtenberg, op.cit, p.204, fig.166. At the beginning of the 19th century several European artists visited Russia, producing albums of different ethnic groups without being aware of the distinctions between Cossacks, Tatars and Bashkirs amongst others. They were quite widely termed 'Cossacks' regardless.

The image on the beaker is very similar to that entitled 'Lancier', a lithograph by Alexander Orlovsky, St. Petersburg, circa 1820, based on a depiction of a Persian cavalryman galloping on his horse and holding a lance (see 'Voyage en Perse, pendant les annees 1812 et 1813...' by Gaspar Drouville, a commander of the Russian Imperial Cavalry).

Alexander Osipovich Orlovsky (Warsaw 1777 - St. Petersburg 1832) was a talented battle scene painter, portrait painter and caricaturist whose range of medium included watercolours, oils, engravings and pastels. Orlovsky travelled extensively and was a volunteer in the partisan group led by Thadeusz Kosciuszko in the Polish liberation movement and uprising of 1794. He moved to Russia in 1802 where he settled in St. Petersburg and was a court artist for the Grand Duke Konstantin Pavlovich, for whom he executed drawings of uniforms and military parades. During his period in St. Petersburg he created numerous genre scenes and also society portraits. Most of his paintings and drawings from this time, however, were scenes of army life and battles, as well as romantic subjects featuring brigands and shipwrecks. In 1809 he received the title of Academician of Battle Painting for his picture Cossack Bivouac. During the war of 1812 against Napoleon, Orlovsky produced several drawings of leading military figures.
In 1816 he became one of the first artists to produce lithographs in Russia.