3-093-787 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

Portrait of General Pyotr Bagration (1765-1812), c1825. Bagration entered the Russian army in 1792. He fought in several of the major battles of the Napoleonic Wars but died after suffering a head wound at the Battle of Borodino during Napoleon's invasion of Russia in 1812. English portraitist George Dawe (1781-1829) was commissioned by Alexander I to paint 329 portraits of senior Russian military staff who had successfully fought Napoleon during his invasion of Russia, for the Military Gallery of the Winter Palace. Dawe worked in Saint Petersburg from 1822 to 1828, with his assistants, Alexander Polyakov and Wilhelm August Golicke, and was officially appointed First Portrait Painter of the Imperial Court.