Gros's striking equestrian portrait of Prince Boris Yusupov (1809) was commissioned by the sitter's father, the nobleman of Catherine the Great's day, N.B.Yusupov, for their estate of Arkhangelskoye outside Moscow. The boy's face, painted in miniature, is not particularly expressive, but Gros obviously enjoyed painting the high-spirited steed and exotic dress of the Russian prince, whose genealogy went back to the Nogai mirzas. The artist places the horseman in a conventional landscape far from remote, cold Russia, which he had never seen.
