Portrait of Elisabeth Petrovna, Empress of Russia

Etching, 1761, lettered with production details in French within image, at bottom: "L.Tocque Peintre du Roy pinxit 1758" and "Grave a St. Petesbourg par Georg Frederic Schmidt en 1761". Lettered with production details in Russian below image: "Писалъ Л: Токе. 1758" and "Гр: Геор: Фрид: Шмитъ. въ Санктпетербурге. 1761".

In the lower margin, the title in Cyrillic Елисавета Первая Императрица I самодержица Всероссiйская (Elizabeth I, Empress and Ruler of All the Russias). After a 1757 painting by Louis Tocqué.

Good example, printed on contemporary laid paper, trimmed close to platemark on three side, affecting the image on right side, otherwise in very good condition.

Louis Tocqué. (1696-1772), French court painter and author of many works for the royal residence at Versailles, painted this portrait of the Russian Empress Elizabeth Petrovna in St Petersburg in 1757. Luxurious and majestic, the portrait continues the traditions of 17th-century French official portraiture. The Empress is shown in traditional majestic pose, holding the mace and sceptre - symbols of power, wearing a flowing mantle, and set against a background of columns and rich drapery. Despite the generalised, representational purpose of the portrait, however, the artist did not totally reject his own personal approach, consisting not only in aiming for a likeness of the sitter, but also in bringing out their character, for which purpose he studied peculiarities of pose and facial expression, making many sketches. The Empress's facial expression is gracious, introducing an element of softness into this official portrait.

The Louis Tocqué's portrait is currently at the State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg.
Georg Friedrich Schmidt is an outstanding figure in the history of engraving in three European countries – Germany, France and Russia, having made his appreciable mark in each of them.

Schmidt was born at Schönerlinde near Berlin in 1712, into the family of a clothmaker. At a very early age he received permission to attend drawing lessons given under the auspices of the Berlin Academy of Arts and he studied and copied the finest examples of the engraver’s art.

In 1737, with a letter of recommendation from the Prussian court’s foremost artist, Antoine Pesne, to his friend Nicolas Lancret, a prominent member of the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, Schmidt set off for Paris. Lancret duly appreciated the young man’s works from Berlin, executed with evident craftsmanship, and recommended him to the skilled engraver and remarkable master portraitist Nicolas de Larmessin (1684–1755), not even as a pupil, but as an assistant or collaborator.


In a relatively short time, Georg Friedrich Schmidt perfectly mastered the techniques of the French school of engraving, which he adopted as a sort of personal canon.

The Parisian public was able to appreciate Schmidt’s talents from engraved likenesses of King Frederick II of Prussia, the Swiss mathematician Johann Bernoulli, Jean-Baptiste Silva – the head of the faculty of medicine at the Sorbonne and consultant to the King, and Archbishop Charles de Saint-Albin and he was acknowledged to be one of the best master engravers.
In 1739, at the suggestion of Hyacinthe Rigaud (1659–1743), rector of the Royal Academy and arguably the most celebrated painter of his day, Schmidt produced an engraving of Rigaud’s portrait of the Comte d’Évreux, the still-living great-nephew of the celebrated Marshal Turenne. This engraving caused a great stir among artists, who proposed that it be displayed at the Academy, an exceptionally significant event that effectively marked the start of Schmidt’s subsequent successful career.


In 1742, for an engraved portrait of Pierre Mignard after an original painting by Rigaud, Schmidt was accepted as a member of the French Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture.

In 1744, Frederick II of Prussia summoned Georg Friedrich Schmidt back to Berlin to be his court engraver. The artist was well received at court. He worked productively and produced a number of outstanding portraits there.
In 1757, with the King’s consent (although Prussia was at war with Russia), Schmidt went off to St Petersburg, where he had been invited on a five-year contract to teach at the engraving class attached to the Academy of Sciences. The most notable works that he produced in his St Petersburg period are portraits of Counts Vorontsov, Razumovsky, Esterhazy and Piotr Shuvalov, as well, of course, as a celebrated portrait of Empress Elizabeth after a painting by Louis Tocqué. In 1765, after Schmidt had already returned to Berlin in 1762, the newly-inaugurated Academy of Arts in St Petersburg elected him as one of its first honorary members.

Back in Berlin, Schmidt continued to work intensively and fruitfully. In this period worked chiefly not with a burin, but in etching supplemented with dry-point like Rembrandt. He was among the first people in the 18th century to become interested in Rembrandt and produced a number of superb etchings of his paintings in which he came closer than any other to the great Dutchman’s own etchings.

Georg Friedrich Schmidt’s name was already famed in his own lifetime, and his universally acclaimed works were actively collected by Russians and by others.