Paul von Franken, 1818-1884

Georgia had a turbulent history having been successively ruled by the Arabs, Khazars, Seljuks and Ottomans. It was annexed by Russia when the king of Eastern Georgia was granted Russian protection in 1783. In 1800, when the last Eastern Georgian Prince was threatened by the Persians, he ceded his country to Russia, with most of the west Georgian Princes following suit in 1801-4, when Georgia became part of the Russian Empire. Tiflis became the seat of the Russian Imperial Government in the Caucasus, and until 1882 it was the residence of a Russian Governor-General.

Many Russian poets and artists, including Pushkin and Lermontov, fell in love with the oriental town, with the bazaar and baths the most luxurious in the world. Henry Norman, travelling there at the end of the 19th century wrote about Tiflis: this precipitate of history … these cross-roads between Europe and Asia, excites your wonder and enchains your recollection chiefly for its human conglomerate …" Henry Norman, M.P., All the Russias, London, 1902, pp204-208.

Many Russians were exiled to Georgia and the Decembrist Baron Andrey Rosen recalled his first impression of Tiflis: "… every face and object has a quite un-European stamp: the houses with flat roofs, Armenians with loaded camels, Georgians with their bullock carts, the women veiled, the asses with bundles of firewood, the horses with rawhide waterskins on their backs … The bazaar and the renowned baths were still on a completely Asiatic plan, and were served only by Orientals." Glyn Barret, "The Rebel on the Bridge, A Life of the Decembrist Andrei Rosen, London, 1975, p.175.

The exoticism of Georgia was as inspirational to Russian artists as Italy was to his Western counterpart. A number of Russian artists painted memorable images of the Georgian landscape and Tiflis, the most significant of these being Pyotr Petrovich Vereshchagin (1836-1886) and Nikanor Grigorievich Chernetsov (1805-1879).