Rather, the faces in his paintings were marked by a refinement not found in other portraits of the time.
Though Fedor Rokotov was a serf or freed serf by birth, his art showed no trace of his humble origins.
The artist’s last works date to the 1790’s. In his final years Rokotov painted portraits of women almost exclusively. Rokotov took seriously the refined language that expressed Rococo’s elegant play of feeling and endeavoured to use it as a living expression of his times.
The particularity of Rokotov’s painting - refined hues, delicate lighting, the music of elusive lines and curves - showed to a large extent the influence of the Italian painter Pietro Rotari, who introduced Rococo painting to Saint Petersburg, where he lived from 1756 to 1762. More rarely, when the fragile ideal happened to coincide with reality, it received an open penetrating embodiment, as in the portrait of the 18-year-old Aleksandra Struyskaya, with whose family Rokotov was friendly, and the young Prince Ivan Baryatinsky, created in the 1780s. That precious essence within the images does not change from portrait to portrait: the soul that governed Rokotov’s imagination was ideal and ingrained in the most varying features.Īt times his portraits were marked with the stamp of social rank, in accordance to the wishes of the patron - as can be seen, for instance, in the portrait of Countess Yekaterina Orlova, one of Catherine II’s young ladies-in-waiting, depicted in befitting attire and with an impenetrable haughty, yet civil, facial expression, created in 1779. In those portraits the forms lost their objective character, their brittleness becoming a reflection of the delicacy of the subject’s spiritual life. They were shoulder-length or waist-length portraits, their hues founded on delicate faded shades, lit so softly that outlines were blurred, the canvas showing through the fragile colors. In Moscow, Fedor Rokotov avoided, to the extent he could, all official requests for paintings but readily painted members of Moscow society in small intimate portraits. But, at the height of his fame, Rokotov unexpectedly left Saint Petersburg for the more provincial Moscow, using his newly gained rank to distance himself from the encroachments of the imperial court on his artistic freedom. Finally, in 1765, he was accorded the title of academician. Rokotov began to find it difficult to handle the mounting number of orders, at times having to work simultaneously on some 50 portraits. A year later he painted the portrait of the new empress, Catherine II in 1763, which was to become a model for later portraits and was much copied. In 1762, at the presentation of his portrait of Peter III, who had just ascended the throne, Rokotov was made a court painter. It was thanks to Count Shuvalov that the 20-year-old Rokotov was afforded the opportunity to paint the portrait of the heir to the throne, Grand Duke Pyotr Fyodorovich (later Peter III), and in 1760, at the count’s order, Rokotov was accepted into the academy. Rokotov’s rapid rise began under the patronage of Count Ivan Shuvalov, the founder of Russia’s first university in Moscow in 1755 and of the Academy of the Arts in Saint Petersburg in 1757, who was a favorite of Empress Elizabeth. Although he experienced dizzying successes that secured for him imperial orders, the title of academician, and ennoblement, he never forgot his origins.