Alexander Vasilchikov

Vasilchikov was an ensign in the Chevalier Guard Regiment when he was noted by Catherine and was appointed gentleman of the bedchamber on 1 August 1772.

She wrote to her friend Friedrich Melchior, Baron von Grimm about Vasilchikov's dismissal: "Why do you reproach me because I dismiss a well-meaning but extremely boring bourgeois in favour of one of the greatest, the most comical and amusing, characters of this iron century?

"[2] Vasilchikov later complained that he felt like a hired gigolo: "I was nothing more to her than a kind of male cocotte and I was treated as such.

If I made a request for myself or anyone else, she did not reply, but the next day I found a bank-note for several thousand rubles in my pocket.

He built a notable collection of Western European paintings and sculptures, including a "Self Portrait" by Velasquez and works by Philips Wouwerman and Andries Botha.