Vasily Tropinin. Portrait of Doctor N. I. Ber

The portrait of Doctor Nikolai Ivanovich Ber is dated 1857, the year of Vasily Tropinin's death (1780–1857): the artist died in Moscow in May. A former serf who received his freedom only at 43, Tropinin became one of the leading Moscow portraitists of the reigns of Alexander I and Nicholas I, and this work belongs to the very end of his career.

The image is set within an oval. An elderly, stout man with a round face, a double chin and a large, high forehead with a receding hairline sits in an armchair in three-quarter view turned to the left. His large grey eyes look pensively from behind spectacles. The doctor wears a black double-breasted frock coat, with a white shirt front and a black neckcloth visible beneath the collar. The flesh tones are yellowish-pink with bluish shadows under the eyes and on the chin, with white highlights on the lips and nose; the background is olive. Oil on canvas.