Portrait of Georg Leopold Goguel

This marvellous portraitist was born in Switzerland and went on to become a professor at the Dresden Academy of Arts. Graf created a whole picture gallery of portraits of his contemporaries. For this portrait his sitter was Georg Leopold Goguel, most famous in Russia today as a relative of Georges-Henri Goguel, a Frenchman who served in the Russian army and later became Councillor of State and Director of the German Colonies near Saratov on the River Volga. With its keen characterization and highly professional execution, this is an excellent example of late 18th-century German portraiture. The sitter is shown in swift movement, seeming to glance out at the viewer - an approach suggested by the man's character, full of a sense of his own worth, energetic and self-confident.