Georgien (Kakhétie.)
1842
watercolor
From the collection of Victoria and Albert Museum
1842
watercolor
From the collection of Victoria and Albert Museum
Dominant colour
Georgien (Kakhétie.) is a 1842 watercolor by Grigoriy Grigorievich Gagarin, a Romanticism work, held at Victoria and Albert Museum.
This watercolor portrait shows a man from Kakhétie, a rugged region in the Caucasus. Prince Gagarin painted it around 1842, capturing local dress in bright detail. His travels weren’t just sightseeing—they fed a book called Scenes, paysages, moeurs et costumes du Caucase. The museum calls this one “superbly” accurate. Want to see more of Gagarin’s work? Look up the Victoria and Albert Museum.
This lithograph depicts a figure from the Kakhétie region in the Caucasus, part of a series published by Prince Grigoriy Gagarin in the mid-19th century. The work highlights the vivid traditional attire of the local people, reflecting Gagarin’s careful documentation of regional customs and dress. The artist, trained in Italy and later active in St. Petersburg’s artistic circles, created the image as part of a broader effort to record the Caucasus’s landscapes and cultures. The lithograph was reproduced in Gagarin’s *Scènes, paysages, moeurs et costumes du Caucase*, published in Paris between…
Read the full account in the museum source.
This Russian prince-turned-diplomat sketched the Caucasus like a tourist with a sharp eye.
See the richer artist page
