Portrait of N. F. Yusupov, 1911.

Prince N.F. Yusupov, portrayed in 1911 and now in the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow, was a member of one of Russia's wealthiest and most culturally prominent aristocratic families. The Yusupovs were legendary patrons of the arts, collectors of European and Russian painting, and owners of the magnificent Arkhangelskoye estate near Moscow. By 1911, the family's prominence was at its zenith before the catastrophe of the revolution; Felix Yusupov would later become famous as the man who killed Rasputin in 1916. N.F. Yusupov's portrait by Bogdanov-Belsky represents a commission at the pinnacle of Russian aristocratic patronage, and the Pushkin Museum's later acquisition of this work places it within the institutional history of Russian portraiture. Bogdanov-Belsky's success in such a commission confirms his standing as one of the most sought-after portraitists of late Imperial Russia.

Oil on canvas in a format appropriate to the sitter's elevated social standing — likely larger in scale and more formally composed than his informal figure studies. The Yusupov family's association with European artistic culture might have shaped the portrait's visual language toward the continental grand portrait tradition as much as Russian convention. Bogdanov-Belsky's handling of aristocratic male portraiture emphasizes bearing, intelligence, and social ease simultaneously.