Portrait of Alexander I of Russia
painting by Sir Thomas Lawrence
Portrait of Alexander I of Russia is an 1818 portrait painting by the English artist Thomas Lawrence featuring the Russian Tsar Alexander I, who had reigned since the overthrow and murder of his father in 1801. It was one of a large series of paintings that Lawrence, the most fashionable painter of the Regency Era, produced of European leaders.
Sitter
Alexander had made peace and allied with Napoleon at the Treaty of Tilsit in 1807, but following the French invasion of Russia in 1812 he had joined forces with Britain to repel him. After the initial defeat of the French Emperor in 1814 during the War of the Sixth Coalition, the Allied sovereigns visited London for victory celebrations in June 1814. Alexander remained a prominent member of the international Congress System, until 1825, when he died in mysterious circumstances.
Painting
The Prince Regent commissioned Lawrence to paint several of the visiting dignitaries. The resulting works included his Portrait of Marshal Blucher and a depiction of the Russian Cossack commander Matvei Platov. Aledander I is depicted standing, looking to the left, in a dark background. He is shown in the uniform who wore at the Battle of Leipzig in 1813.
Lawrence was paid 500 guineas for the work.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Portrait of Alexander I of Russia” as painting by Sir Thomas Lawrence. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the arts & letters register because the source frames it as painting by Sir Thomas Lawrence. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q28028993. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1818, 1801, 1807 and 1812.
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This entry incorporates text from “Portrait of Alexander I of Russia” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.