Franz Krüger, “Portrait of Prince Nikolai Saltykov”. 1850, Oil on Canvas, 98 x 79 cm, Hermitage Museum
Born into a noble family in September of 1797 at Grob-Radegast, Duchy of Anhalt-Dessau, Germany, Franz Krüger’s first studied with the local ornithologist I. F. Naumann, for whom he painted sketches of bird species. and printmaker Carl WilheIm Kolbe, who instilled in him the qualities of precise observation. In 1812, Krüger moved to Berlin where he studied at the Academy of the Arts until his graduation in 1814, continuing his studies independently.
Between 1818 and 1819, Krüger produced a series of paintings dedicated to the struggle of the German people against Emperor Napoleon. In 1820 at the Berlin Academy, he exhibited portraits of Prince Augustus of Prussia and Count August von Gneisenau, for which he received further royal commissions leading to him becoming one of the most popular portrait painters in Europe.
Franz Krüger became in 1825 a member and Professor of the Berlin Academy of the Arts, and later, became a court painter of the Prussian King Friedrich Wilheim III. In 1831, now a member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Art, he exhibited at the Winter Palace his painting “Parade ion the Opera Square in Berlin” and his “Equestrian Portrait of Friedrich Wilheim III of Prussia”. The large parade composition, done between 1824 and 1831, is now at the Berlin National Gallery and the equestrian portrait is at the Winter Palace’s Military Gallery.
Enjoying a special arrangement with the Russian Emperor Nicholas I, Franz Krüger left his most significant portraits of members of the Royal Family and nobility, as well as paintings and watercolors of court life, parades and military exercises, to the Hermitage Museum. These include perhaps his most famous portraits, those of Emperor Alexander I and his brother Nicholas I.
Born in October of 1736, Nikolai Saltykov was a member of the Saltykov noble family, who became a Russian Field Marshal and imperial courtier and the tutor of the future Russian Tsar Paul I and his two sons, Constantine and Alexander. Catherine II of Russia made him vice-president of Russia’s Military Council and, ten years later, made him a member of the Order of Saint Andrew, a senator and member of the high court council.
The portrait of Nikolai Saltykov by Franz Krüger, done in 1850, depicts Saltykov at the age of fourteen, dressed in traditional court costume. By that time, Saltykov had already taken part, with his father, in the Russian advance to the River Rhine against Prussian forces in the Seven Years’ War and was a permanent member of the Semyonovsky Regiment, one of the oldest regiments of the Imperial Russian Army.