Robert Ker Porter

[1] He decided that he wanted to become a painter of battle scenes, and in 1790 his mother took him to see Benjamin West, who thought enough of his sketches to procure him admission as a student at the Royal Academy.

Other successful works in the same format were the Battle of Lodi (1803), also exhibited at the Lyceum, and the Defeat of the French at the Devil's Bridge, Mont St. Gothard, by Suwarrow in 1804.

During his residence in the city he won the affections of a Russian princess, Mary, daughter of Prince Theodor von Scherbatoff, but complications connected with their courtship necessitated his leaving Russia, whereupon he travelled in Finland and Sweden, where he was knighted by King Gustav IV Adolf in 1806.

He was soon abroad again, and in August 1817 he left from St Petersburg on a long journey which took him through the Caucasus to Tehran, and then southwards via Isfahan to the site of the ancient Persepolis, where he made drawings and transcribed a number of cuneiform inscriptions.

At Tehran, he had an audience with the Persian monarch Fath-Ali Shah Qajar, whose portrait he drew, and from whom in 1819 he received the Order of the Lion and the Sun.

[1] After returning to England, he soon left again for Russia, but in 1826 he was appointed British consul in Venezuela, a position he held for fifteen years.

On 3 May 1842 he wrote from St Petersburg to his brother that he was about to sail for England, but died suddenly the next day as he was returning in his droshky (carriage) from a farewell visit to Emperor Nicholas I.