Portrait of Sophia S. Kiselyova (1801-1875)

Countess Sophia Kiselyova was a prominent figure in Russian high society when Hayter painted her in 1831 during one of his Continental sojourns. The portrait’s presence in the Hermitage reflects the cosmopolitan art market of the 1830s, when fashionable English portrait painters received commissions from Russian, Italian, and German aristocrats. Kiselyova’s husband was a powerful government minister under Nicholas I. George Hayter was the preeminent British history and portrait painter of the early Victorian era, appointed Principal Painter in Ordinary to Queen Victoria in 1841.

Hayter adapts his English portrait style to Continental aristocratic taste, the composition’s elegance and the sitter’s fashionable dress reflecting the international sophistication of St. Petersburg’s elite.