Porträt des Valentin Musin-Pushkin (1735-1804)

Valentin Musin-Pushkin (1735–1804) was a Russian military officer and nobleman who served in Catherine II's campaigns against the Ottoman Empire. Levitzky's undated portrait of him — the current collection is unrecorded — would fit naturally within the painter's military portraiture of the 1770s or 1780s, when he was the dominant portraitist of Saint Petersburg's military aristocracy. The Musin-Pushkin family was one of Russia's great noble dynasties, and Valentin was a member of a generation of officers who had witnessed Russia's transformation into a major European military power through the victories of the Seven Years' War and the Russo-Turkish Wars. Levitzky's military portraits of this generation capture men shaped by real battlefield experience, and the best of them convey this not through theatrical poses but through a directness of gaze that feels earned rather than performed.

Oil on canvas following Levitzky's established military portrait conventions: dark uniform coat, differentiated decorations, face modeling with warm light and cool shadows. The unlocated canvas's technical character can be inferred from the consistent quality Levitzky maintained across his military portrait output.