L. I. Kiel. Equestrian Portrait of Emperor Alexander I

This small lithograph from the first half of the 19th century shows Emperor Alexander I on horseback. The drawing is by the artist L. I. Kiel, and the sheet was printed in St Petersburg at Winberg's lithographic press. The lithograph itself measures 15 by 10.5 cm, and 21.7 by 17 cm in its frame.

The sheet has had an eventful history. It came to the Azov Museum from the State Hermitage, as the transfer certificate and the registration marks on the back show. The back also bears a stamp of the Museum of the Revolution and a printed label, which reveal that the lithograph once belonged to the collection of Georgy Solomonovich Gabaev (1877–1956), a military historian and one of the organisers of military museums and archives in Petrograd in 1918–1919.

Gabaev collected prints on military history subjects: the Guards regiments, the Napoleonic Wars and the defence of Sevastopol. Much of his collection was lost. In 1914, when he was mobilised, he left it in 30 crates at the museum of a sapper battalion, and in 1918 he found only 14. Later, in besieged Leningrad, strangers who had moved into his flat destroyed more than seven further crates of books, prints and manuscripts.