While British painters who painted Catherine the Great during her lifetime occupy a very modest place in history, engravings of the empress made by British masters were on sale either as separate prints or as illustrations in books about her and her Russia. It was, however, Catherine's misfortune to rule when some of England's greatest caricaturists were at the height of their powers and it was the images (one hesitates to call them likenesses) that they produced that proved the most influential.
