Little-Known Images of Folk Costumes and Types of Russia's Peoples in the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm

Abstract

The article discusses the possible authorship and provenance of more than two hundred drawings of the peoples of the Russian Empire in the 1740s, held presently in the Department of Prints and Drawings of the National Museum in Stockholm, Sweden. Based in part on both the external physical evidence of the folios' binding and a stylistic analysis of the drawings themselves, the authors conclude that these little-known drawings may have been a gift from Empress Elizabeth I to her relative, the King of Sweden, and that at least some of the drawings were the work of Augustin Dahlstein.