Grand Duke Paul Petrovich of Russia, the future Emperor Paul I (1754-1801), half-length, with the sash and star of the Order of Saint Andrew the First-Called, and the star of the Order of Saint Anna

The Emperor Paul I, styled Grand Duke until his accession in 1796, was the son of Catherine the Great and her husband and predecessor, Peter III, and is remembered as a complex and fascinating character who transformed aspects of Russian law, took a passionate interest in the organisation of the Russian military, oversaw architectural projects in Saint Petersburg and played an important role on the international stage, famously becoming the Grand Master of the Knights of Saint John after their expulsion from Malta by Napoleon.
The French artist Jean-Louis Voille was born into the family of a Parisian jeweller and trained in the studio of François-Hubert Drouais. Like other Western European artists before and after him (Johann Baptist Lampi, George Dawe), Voille found patronage at the Imperial court in Saint Petersburg, working in Russia 1770-1803, painting portraits of members of the Imperial family and other prominent figures, including that of the future Ambassador to the Court of Saint James's and father-in-law to the 11th Earl of Pembroke, Count Simeon Vorontsov (Saint Petersburg, State Russian Museum). Voille's celebrated portrait of the young Paul as Grand Duke has been dated to 1771, when Paul would have been 16 or 17 (Tashkent, State Museum of the Arts of Uzbekistan); a second version is in the State Russian Museum, Saint Petersburg.