Charles-Amédée van Loo. "The Electrical Experiment", 1777

This 1777 painting by Charles-Amédée-Philippe van Loo is a genre scene showing a demonstration of an electrical experiment. In the centre a barefoot black-haired girl in a yellow dress and a white chemise stands on a footstool: with her left hand she touches a glass globe with a rod, and with her right she dips another rod into a glass of water held by a young Black servant in red. On the left a lady in a blue dress with white lace sits on a chair, behind her are two men in elegant costumes, and on the right a man in dark clothes stands by the apparatus.

Charles-Amédée van Loo (1719–1795), known as Van Loo the Prussian, is represented in Russia only in the Yusupov collection. The painting is a pendant to "The Pneumatic Experiment" by the same artist; both works belonged to the collection of Prince Nikolai Borisovich Yusupov.

The pair hung in the State Bedroom of the palace at Arkhangelskoye. In 1835 Princess Zinaida Ivanovna Yusupova commissioned copies of them from the serf painter Grigory Novikov; the copies were sent to St Petersburg, and their present whereabouts are unknown. Oil on canvas.