Olga's Gallery

Pierre Prudon was born in Cluny, Burgundy, the tenth son of a stonecutter. Later he changed his name into the more aristocratic sounding Pierre-Paul Prud'hon. He began studying painting at the Dijon Academy under François Devosge at the age of sixteen, and continued his studies at the Paris Academy in 1780. In 1784 he won the Prix de Rome, which gave him a pension to continue his education in Italy, where he stayed from 1785 to 1788. Although this was the period of Jacques-Louis David's triumphs in Rome, Prud'hon remained unimpressed by his countryman's neoclassicism. Italian masters, especially Correggio, had a much stronger and lasting effect on him.

On his return to France Prud'hon settled in Paris, supporting himself with drawings and miniatures. His first important commission, in 1798, was for a ceiling painting on allegorical themes in the palace of Saint-Cloud. This was followed by similar orders.

In 1801, Napoleon gave him commissions for portraits, ceiling decorations, and allegorical paintings. Napoleon's first wife, Joséphine, became his most influential patron, and Prud'hon executed many portraits for the family of the Bonapartes, among them a beautiful portrait of Joséphine. Napoleon's second wife, Marie-Louise, also admired his work, securing many commissions for him and employing him as her drawing master.

Many of his paintings were on mythological and allegorical subjects and were commissioned for public buildings. To these belong Innocence Choosing Love over Wealth, fulfilled together with Marie Françoise Constance Mayer-Lamartiniere, and his celebrated Crime Pursued by Justice and Vengeance (1808). "Prud'hon's true genius lay in allegory; this is his empire and his true domain,” his nephew Eugène Delacroix wrote. Prud'hon also designed furniture and interiors in classical lines.

Though Prud'hon chose the same ‘antique’ subjects as the neoclassicists, his sensitive handling of color and composition are an overpass to Romanticism. The artist died in Paris in 1823.

Bibliography:

French Painting. XIX century. by V. Berezina. Moscow. Izobrazitelnoe Iskusstvo. 1980. (in Russian)
The Classical Tradition in European Painting. XV-XX centuries. Moscow. 1985. (in Russian)
Painting of Europe. XIII-XX centuries. Encyclopedic Dictionary. Iskusstvo. 1999. (in Russian)
Prud'hon by Sylvain Laveissiere. Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1998.
Drawing an Elusive Line: The Art of Pierre-Paul Prud'hon. by Elizabeth E. Guffey. Univ of Delaware Pr, 2001.
The Language of the Body: Drawings by Pierre-Paul Prud'hon. by Robert Gordon (Editor), John Elderfield. Harry N Abrams, 1996.
 

Count Alexander Ivanovich Osterman-Tolstoy (1770-1857) son of the Lieutenant-General Ivan Matveevich Tolstoy (1746-1808) and his wife Agrafena Ilyinichna, nee Bibikova. He began his military service during the Turkish-Russian war of 1787-1791. In 1796 his two childless grandfathers, Fedor and Ivan Ostermans, brothers of his immediate grandmother, gave him their family name, the title of count and big fortune. Count Osterman-Tolstoy did not leave the military service. In 1798 he was already major-general, participated in all major battles in the Napoleonic wars in 1805-1814; during 1812-1814 commanded a corps, and distinguished himself in the battle at Kulm 17-18 August 1813. His corps defended the gorges in the mountains of Bohemia, and captured marshal Vandamme. During the battle the count lost his left hand, as Emperor Alexander I put it, “by sacrificing his hand he bought us victory”. Count Osterman-Tolstoy remained in service until 1826, after Alexander's I death he retired and started traveling around Europe and the Middle East. In 1831, he was a military consultant of Ibrahim-pasha in Egypt and participated in actions against the Turks.
He never returned to Russia and shared his time between Italy and Switzerland.
He loved practical jokes and mystifications. According to his contemporaries he was “a remarkable and original person, distinguished with frankness and generosity. Even among his famous contemporaries he could be singled out. Fearlessness, courage, and endurance in battle were his characteristics as a military officer.”
Count Osterman-Tolstoy was married to Princess Elisabeth Alexeevna Golitsina (1779-1853) from 1799; they had no children. He had foreign mistresses and a lot of illegitimate children. There is an engraving, published in Pisa in 1827, on which Count Osterman-Tolstoy is depicted sitting beside a pram with a sleeping baby and two older children playing near by; the inscription says, ‘Je me flatte que c’est les derniers faries (sic). A 55 ans il est temps de faire la clôture.’ (I flatter myself with the thought that it’s my last extravagancy. At the age of 55 one must stop). Count Osterman-Tolstoy died in Switzerland in 1857.
See: Pierre-Paul Prud'hon. Portrait of Count A. I. Osterman-Tolstoy.

Bibliography:
French Painting. XIX century. by V. Berezina. Moscow. Izobrazitelnoe Iskusstvo. 1980. (in Russian)
Famous Russians in the 18th and 19th centuries. St. Petersburg. 1996.
Encyclopedia of Famous Russians. Moscow. 2000.