Photo of the General of the cavalry, orderly chieftain of the Astrakhan Cossack army, member of the State Council, Count Nikolai Alekseevich Protasov-Bakhmetyev.

Russian Empire, St. Petersburg, photo studio of Their Imperial Majesties Levitsky.

Photo: 12 x 8.9 cm. Passe-partout: 17 x 9.6 cm.
The photo is pasted on a branded passe-partout of the Levitsky's photo studio at 3 Kazanskaya Street. Facsimile stamp of the photographer at the bottom right.
Inscription on the front side under the photo: “à ma chere et / bien aimez / Mignor / <inzb> Nov 1902".
Slight staining; owner's marks in pencil and blue ink on the reverse side.

General of the cavalry, chieftain of the Astrakhan Cossack army, Count Nikolai Alekseevich Protasov-Bakhmetyev (1834-1907) was the son of the hero of the Napoleonic wars A. N. Bakhmetyev and the Polish princess Chetvertinskaya.

Levitsky  Sergei (1819-1898) - court photographer, captured four generations of the Romanov dynasty. He had the exclusive right of artistic property to the portraits of the Emperor and Empress of Russia. In 1849, he shot the writer N.V. Gogol and other prominent Russian writers. In 1864, for his portrait of Napoleon III and his family at Fontainebleau, he was awarded the title "Photographer of Emperor Napoleon III" and became a member of the French Photographic Society. In 1890-1894 at the request of Alexander III a model "photographic house" was built for Levitsky. Levitsky was awarded many foreign and Russian orders and medals, and repeatedly received the highest awards at international photo exhibitions. In 1847, Levitsky designed a camera with furs, in 1849 at the Industrial Exhibition in Paris, Chevalier received a gold medal for daguerreotype photographs taken with this device, it was the first ever award for photographs. Levitsky was one of the first Russian photographers to use the volt arc, electric lighting and bromine-gelatine plates. He was one of the founders of the V Department of Lighting and its applications at the Russian Technical Society.