Catharina Paulovna (1788-1819) was the daughter of Paul I, Emperor of Russia and Maria Fyodorovna.  She married twice, first in 1809, to George of Oldenburg, second in 1816 to William I, King of Wuttemberg.  Their daughter was Sophia Frederica Mathilda, Queen of the Netherlands.

Set in the original gilt mount. 

2 7/8 inches high.

Louis Antoine Collas (1775-after 1829) was certainly the finest of the many French portraitists working in America during the late 18th and early 19th centuries.  Born in Bordeaux, Collas studied in Paris and exhibited at the Salon de Paris starting in 1798. From 1803-1811, Collas painted at the Court of St. Petersburg, where his sitters included the daughters of the Czar.  Collas' American period started in New York in 1816.  He is listed in the city directory as Lewis Collers.  He also worked in Charleston in 1816 and 1817.  His large painting on porcelain of the Izard children (Gibbes Art Gallery, Charleston) is undoubtedly his masterwork of this period.  Despite his distinguished clientele, Collas continued to move, 1820, back in New York, and from 1822 to 1829, and in and out of New Orleans.  During that period, he is known to have been in Baltimore, and various locations in Louisiana.  He exhibited at the Peale Museum in Baltimore again using the name "Collars", and while in New Orleans he occasionally used the name "Collard".   There is no record of Collas in America after 1829, but recently an unsigned miniature by Collas of Sam Houston (Sam Houston Memorial Museum, Huntsville, Texas) painted no earlier than 1836 has come to light, leading to the assumption that Collas moved on to the Mexican territories.   The Metropolitan Museum of Art has a fine example of his work.

See:  The Portrait Miniatures in the Collections of the House of Orange-Nassau, nos. 357-365 for portraits of Catharina Paulovna, including another by Collas.