Auction Name: 2025 December 17 Imperial Fabergé & Russian Works of Art Signature® Auction

Lot Number: 69014

Shortcut to Lot: HA.com/8232*69014

Attributed to Dmitry Levitsky (Russian, 1735-1822)
Portrait of Mavra Borisovna Strugovshchikova (1733-1805)
Oil on canvas
23 x 18-1/2 inches (58.4 x 47.0 cm) (work)
29-1/4 x 24-1/2 inches (74.3x 62.2 cm) (framed)

PROVENANCE:
Mavra Borisovna Strugovshchikova, later Yakovleva, thence by descent;
Collection of V. B. Khvoshchinsky, Rome (before 1917), and thence by descent;
Basile V. Khvoshchinsky, Paris;
Ferdinand Lammot Beilin, acquired from the above, June 1922, thence by descent;
In the Washington D.C. trade, acquired from the descendants of the above;
Private Collection, New York, acquired from the above.

ILLUSTRATED:
Dmitriev, Vsevolod, РУССКiЯ КАРТИНЫ ИЗЪ СОБРАНiЯ В. Б. ХВОЩИНСКАГО - [ПЕТРОГРАД : Б. И., 1917].

LITERATURE:
Dmitriev, Vsevolod,НЕУКЛЮЖИЕ УЧЕНИКИ, АПОЛЛОН - 1917. № 4-5.


Dmitry Grigorievich Levitsky (Ukrainian, 1735-1822) stands among the most distinguished portraitists of the Russian Enlightenment, renowned for his ability to unite formal elegance with an acute sensitivity to character. A pupil of Anton Losenko at the Imperial Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg, Levitsky rose to prominence during the reign of Catherine the Great, when portraiture served as both personal commemoration and an assertion of cultural sophistication. His works are marked by a refined neoclassical clarity, tempered by the warmth of human presence; his sitters, often members of the Russian nobility and intelligentsia, appear dignified yet vividly alive.

The Portrait of Mavra Borisovna Strugovshchikova (1733-1805), attributed to Levitsky, embodies these artistic qualities. Strugovshchikova was a well-known beauty of the 18th century and much admired by Prince Potemkin for her cool elegance. She was the younger sister of the director of Schools in St. Petersburg, and later married the wealthy Sergei Savich Yakovlev, whose portrait by Borovikovsky is in the Hermitage. The painting presents the sitter with a quiet self-assurance that recalls the grace and subtle introspection characteristic of Levitsky's best work. The portrait's intimacy and compositional restraint suggest the hand of an artist attuned to both psychological nuance and formal discipline, hallmarks of Levitsky's mature period.

Levitsky clearly found Strugovshchikova inspiring: another portrait of her by Levitsky was exhibited and reproduced in 1870 in the Historical Album of Portraits of Famous Persons of the 16th-18th Centuries, an exhibition of the Society for the Encouragement of Artists (cat. no. 343). The catalog also noted that a full-length portrait of Mavra Borisovna remained in her family's collection with her descendant A.N. Strugovshchikov.

This portrait passed out of the family and was illustrated in Vsevolod Dmitriev's 1917 publication РУССКiЯ КАРТИНЫ ИЗЪ СОБРАНiЯ В. Б. ХВОЩИНСКАГО (Russian Paintings from the Collection of V. B. Khvoshchinsky) and it was discussed that same year in Dmitriev's article "НЕУКЛЮЖИЕ УЧЕНИКИ" ("Awkward Pupils") in АПОЛЛОН (nos. 4-5). The painting had been copied in the 19th century, and a version is in the collection of the Saratov State Museum of Fine Art, where scholars have suggested that the original may, in fact, have been by Rokotov.

After the revolution, the Khvoshchinsky family relocated from Rome to Paris, and Vasily (Basile) Khvoshchinsky opened a gallery there, from which the painting was acquired in June of 1922 by Ferdinand Lammot Beilin, an American diplomat. Beilin brought the work to the United States, where it descended in the family, until it was sold with the other effects from the Beilin family estate, Evermay, in 2011.

The painting thus not only carries an unbroken line of distinguished ownership but also occupies a recognized place in the early literature of Russian art history, linking it to the broader narrative of Levitsky's enduring legacy as one of the preeminent interpreters of eighteenth-century Russian society.


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