3-094-122 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

Portrait of Joseph O'Rowrke (1762-1849), 1822. Count Joseph Cornelius O'Rourke was a Russian nobleman and military leader of Irish descent who fought in the Napoleonic Wars and achieved the rank of lieutenant general. He is noted for leading a campaign against the Turks in present-day Serbia, where a combined Russian and Serb army defeated the Ottoman Empire at Varvarin in 1810. 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.