PHOTO: portrait of Emperor Nicholas II found in a Tbilisi dumpster
On 17th September 2026, a prominent Georgian scientist and researcher, Nana Kardava, found a portrait of Emperor Nicholas II in a dumpster .in Tbilisi. She subsequently brought the painting to the Palace of Arts of Georgia, situated in the Georgian capital.
Museum experts believe that the work has a distinctive artistic value – the compositional type of the portrait is close to the portraits of Emperor Nicholas II, created by the great Russian artist Ilya Yefimovich Repin in 1895-1896. Repin created several official portraits of the young emperor, and it was during this period that one of the most famous state iconographic types of Nicholas II was formed.
PHOTO: an art expert with Nana Kardava, posing with the portrait of Nicholas II
The painting shares several interesting similarities with Repin’s style and patterns, such as the emperor’s posture and head slightly turned, the direction of his gaze, a dark military uniform with a red collar, a golden aiguillette, a diagonally lowered portupea and the characteristic gesture of the right hand. These similarities give museum experts reason to connect the work at this stage with the portrait type of Nicholas II created by Repin.
PHOTOS: two of Repin’s most famous state portraits of Emperor Nicholas II
The director of the Palace of Arts of Georgia, Georgi Kalandia, noted that the historical study of the painting by art experts is now under way, the results of which will identify the artist.
In order to accurately establish the authorship, it is necessary to conduct a number of studies: the study the reverse side of the canvas, the inscriptions on it, to analyze the paint, and also to compare in detail with other famous works of Ilya Repin.
Kalandia stressed that the very fact that the canvas, which has great historical and artistic significance, was discovered completely by accident and could easily have been destroyed, gives this story a special meaning. The portrait will be kept in the collection of the Palace of Arts Museum.
Repin often painted portrait studies for his more important works, with ceremonial portraits being among them. It should be noted that Repin had a number of very talented students who worked under him, often recreating copies of the great portraitists works.
PHOTO: the portrait reflects the work of Russian artist Ilya Repin
In 1895-1896, Ilya Repin created several portraits of Nicholas II, two of which are kept in the collection of the State Russian Museum (St. Petersburg), and one more in the State Hermitage Museum. The artist was commissioned to paint one of the works by the Ministry of the Imperial Court for the meeting room of the State Council. As Repin said in a letter to the public figure and collector Alexander Zhirkevich, “it took seven sessions to paint the ceremonial portrait”.
Ilya Repin painted the same portrait again, but as an element of the interior. In the painting “The Ceremonial Meeting Of The State Council 7 May 1901”, on the day of the centenary of its establishment”, Nicholas II sits against its background.
This is not the first portrait of Nicholas II by Repin found in a landfill. After the 1917 Revolution, the portrait from the Mariinsky Palace was considered lost. In the early 1980s, it surfaced in the possession of the Leningrad collector Nikolai Kozhevnikov, who claimed to have found the canvas in a landfill during the Great Patriotic War. The canvas passed from hand to hand, was stored under a carpet, once it was even exchanged for a two-room apartment in Leningrad.
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