Varvara Nikolaevna Golitsyna, who was born on July 7, 1762, married Prince Sergei Sergeievich Gagarin (1745-1798) and was the mother of four children. She died at thirty-nine. As Greuze never went to Russia, the princess must have visited Paris either shortly before or after her wedding. Her pose is distant and formal, while her costume is not unlike the dresses worn by the queen, Marie Antoinette (1755-1793), in the early 1780s.

Varvara Nikolaevna was born on July 7, 1762. The daughter of Prince Nikolai Mikhailovich Golitsyn (1727–1787) and Princess Ekaterina Aleksandrovna Golovina (1728–1769), she married Prince Sergei Sergeevich Gagarin (1745–1798). She seems to have had four children, the dates of whose births are variously recorded, and died early in 1802 at the age of thirty-nine. As Greuze never went to St. Petersburg, the princess must have visited Paris either before or after her wedding, the date of which has not been discovered. Her upright pose is both distant and formal. Her costume is similar to the white dresses worn at the time by the French queen, Marie Antoinette (1755–1793). The oval canvas is conspicuously signed on the pedestal in the foreground at the bottom.

[2012]

Inscription: Signed (lower center): J·B·Greuze

by descent to the sitter's great-grandson, Prince Victor Nikolaievich Gagarine, Moscow (by 1906–d. 1912); Gagarine family (1912–23; sold to Wildenstein); [Wildenstein, New York, 1923–27; sold to Haggin]; Mrs. James B. Haggin, New York (1927–d. 1965); her sister, Mrs. William M. Haupt, New York (1965)

Nicolas Mikhaïlowitch. Portraits russes des XVIIIe et XIXe siècles. 2, St. Petersburg, 1906, no. 32, ill., identifies the sitter, the daughter of Prince Nicolas Mikhaïlowitch Golitzyne and the wife of Prince Serge Serguéewitch Gagarine; as in the collection of prince V. Gagarine, Moscow.

Louis Réau. "Greuze et la Russie." L'art et les artistes 1 (1920), pp. 285–86, ill.

Anita Brookner. "Jean-Baptiste Greuze–II." Burlington Magazine 98 (June 1956), p. 196, states that a portrait of Princess Gagarine is among the only superior productions by Greuze of the 1780s.

Anita Brookner. Greuze: The Rise and Fall of an Eighteenth-century Phenomenon. Greenwich, Conn., 1972, pp. 80, 126–27, dates it about 1786 on grounds of costume.

Edgar Munhall. Jean-Baptiste Greuze, 1725–1805. Exh. cat.Hartford, 1976, p. 152, compares it to "Woman with a Spaniel, Presumed Portrait of Madame de Porcin" (Musée d'Angers).

James Thompson. "Jean-Baptiste Greuze." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 47 (Winter 1989/90), pp. 41–42, 44, 47, ill. (color), suggests it was a wedding portrait painted when the sitter was about twenty years old, or about 1780.