3-094-124 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

Portrait of Karl V. Budberg (1774-1829), 1822. Baron Karl Vasilievich Ludwig von Budberg-Bönninghausen was an Imperial Russian cavalry general and nobleman who participated in the Napoleonic Wars. Budberg first joined the military at the age of eleven. He participated in the Italian and Swiss expedition and the Anglo-Russian invasion of Holland in 1799. In 1811, he was made chief of His Majesty's Life-Guards Cuirassier Regiment, and maintained this command through the French invasion of Russia and the subsequent War of the Sixth Coalition, where he distinguished himself in numerous battles, including Borodino, Kulm, and Leipzig. In 1826 he was promoted to lieutenant general and then fought in the Russo-Turkish War of 1828, during which he died of a sudden illness. 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.