Peter Edward Stroehling

[1][2] However, one biographer states that he was a Russian of German descent, educated at the expense of Catherine the Great.

Early in 1796, he was in Vienna and the same year travelled to Saint Petersburg to attend the coronation of Paul I of Russia, taking with him a retinue of servants and representing himself as an English nobleman.

[4][5] From 1803 to 1807, he was in London, where like Johann Zoffany, he foresaw significantly better opportunities to make his name and fortune than at a German court,[6] and was there again from 1819 to 1826.

[5] Notable commissions include a portrait of Queen Louise of Prussia, which was acquired by the Hohenzollern Museum in Berlin, and one of King George III at Windsor Castle with an adoring spaniel, painted in 1807 and now in the Royal Collection.

[10] Stroehling's image of the poet Ludwig Achim von Arnim is among his best-known work and is also the only well-known likeness of its subject.