Portrait of Countess Agrafena Fiodorovna Zakrevskaya (1799-1879), signed l.c.: Geo.Dawe R.A.pin... Petersburg 1823. The sitter was the daughter of Count Feodor Andreevich Tolstoy (1782-1846), a flamboyant figure in St.Petersburg, known as 'the American', who had been left on his own off the Aleutian Islands during a world voyage as a punishment for insubordination. In 1818 she married Arseny Zakrevsky who became Governor of Finland in 1823 and was later Minister of the Interior. Agrafena was an attractive and sociable figure in St.Petersburg society, much loved by the Russian poets, Bariatinsky and Pushkin. Pushkin was particularly taken with her, and they started a passionate affair in 1828. He wrote several poems to the Countess, including The Portrait in which 'with her bazing soul and tempestuous passions' she appears 'like a lawless comet' in St.Petersburg. In November 1829 Pushkin drew up a list of thirty women with whom he had been in love and Agrafena features in this 'Don Juan' list.