Part 2: A Ten-Year-Old Court Lady: Stiff Pose and Poetic Soul🩷

The process of Europeanizing Russian culture, which began under Peter the Great, did not proceed as quickly or as smoothly as it might seem. The nearly seven-century dominance of the icon had left a deep imprint on Russia's artistic consciousness. While the Fermor children's portraits are undoubtedly close to European models, they also bear a kinship to icon painting with its flattened perspective and use of pure colors without half-tones.

In keeping with the tradition of the Elizabethan era, children were depicted as adults in paintings. Although Sarra Eleonora Fermor was only about ten years old at the time, the girl is portrayed in a formal pose, wearing an elaborate, low-cut dress, with her hair curled and powdered like a lady of the court—a reflection of both convention and her family's high social standing. A certain awkwardness and stiffness in her movements, a tension in her posture, does not prevent the artist from creating a lively, poetic, and touching image of an adolescent girl.

Sarra Eleonora Fermor was born in 1740. At the age of twenty-five, she married Count Jakob Stenbock. Their eldest son took the surname Stenbock-Fermor and became the founder of one of the well-known comital families of the Russian Empire. For a long time, the Stenbock family resided in Estland (Estonia). Their lineage can be traced up to the Revolution of 1917. Today, the Stenbock family mansion in Reval (modern-day Tallinn) houses the Government of Estonia.
Pictured above: Portrait of Sarra Eleonora Fermor by the Russian artist Ivan Vishnyakov
⬆️The Stenbock House in Tallinn (now the Government Building)

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