On 14th April 2024, a collection of 43 watercolors, painted by Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna, sold at a Moscow auction for 60 million rubles [$640.000 USD] – which is double their estimated value.
For the first time, a collection on this scale of the grand duchess’s works went under the hammer at the Moscow Auction House. The total value of the collection was estimated at 30 million rubles [$325,000 USD]. The authenticity of each work was confirmed by art historians and experts of the Tretyakov National Research Institute in Moscow.
It was hoped that the entire collection would be purchased by one of Russia’s wealthy oligarchs or a corporation and donated to a museum, however, most of the watercolours were snapped up by private collectors.
During the auction, several records were set for Olga Alexandrovna’s works. One of her watercolor’s “From the Service” of the 1920s and 1930s” sold for 7 million rubles [$74,500 USD], while a second watercolour “Landscape of a Provincial Town” sold for 3.1 million rubles [$33,000 USD].
Prices such as this will most certainly increase demand for Olga’s paintings, as well as increase their price, when they are offered to the art market, both in Russia and the West.
Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna (1882-1960) painted more than 2,000 watercolours during her lifetime. She was 78-years-old, when she died in in Toronto, Canada, she was the last Grand Duchess of Russia.
PHOTO: Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna poses in front of some her watercolours at Gatchina, late 19th century.
On 14th April 2024, more than 40 watercolours painted by Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna (1882-1960), will go under the hammer at an auction in Moscow.
Olga’s watercolours continue to generate interest among professional and amateur collectors, both in Russia and abroad. The demand for her works have helped drive up list prices when any of her paintings are presented at auction. This current group of watercolours is expected to break all previous records.
The auction catalogue [in Russian only] contains a total of 43 watercolors, including landscapes still life, flowers, etc. The total estimated value of this group is 30 million rubles [$325,000 USD]. Estimates of individual lots range from 500,000 [$5,400 USD] to 1.5 million [$16,200 USD] rubles.
A total of 104 items of the Grand Duchess’s legacy will be sold, including autographs of members of the Russian Imperial Family, commemorative medals, pieces of furniture, and sculptures.
This group of watercolours and other items belonged to Olga Nikolaevna Kulikovsky-Romanov (1926-2020), the third wife of Grand Duchess Olga’s eldest son, Tikhon Nicholaevich Kulikovsky (1917-1993). Upon the grand duchess’s death in 1960, the bulk of her estate was acquisitioned by Tikhon. When Tikhon died in 1993, the collection passed to his wife Olga Kulikovsky. During the 1990s, Olga Kulikovsky travelled to Russia, taking the watercolours and other items with her. She toured the country, hosting numerous exhibits of her mother-in-laws paintings to Russians for the first time.
The youngest child and daughter of Emperor Alexander III and the youngest sister of Emperor Nicholas II, Olga was a prolific painter, producing over 2,000 paintings in her lifetime. She studied painting from various Russian masters, including Vasily Makovsky. During her early years in Russia, Olga painted for pleasure, often gifting her watercolours to relatives and friends, signing the works with her first initials.
During her years in exile – in both Denmark and Canada – Olga signed her works with “Olga”. The sale of her paintings provided a source of income for her and her family during their years in exile. This photo comes from the album of her cousin Princess Victoria of Wales.
Let us hope that this current collection of 43 watercolours are purchased as a group, and added to the collection of the State Historical Museum in St. Petersburg – PG
On 16th February 2023, two jewel albums belonging to Grand Duchess Xenia [Ksenia] Alexandrovna [1875-1960] – the eldest sister of Emperor Nicholas II – sold at a Bonhams (Paris) auction for 63,375 Euros [$69,000 USD].
The leather-bound albums were illustrated in watercolours by Xenia herself, and feature her personal collection of jeweellery and bibelots The first album is dated from 24th June 1880 to 1905, and the second album from 12th January 1894 to 25th March 1912. The jewel albums display the Grand Duchess’s exceptional skill with watercolours, a talent perfected from an early age.
When Grand Duchess Xenia Alexanrovna fled Boshevik Russia In April 1919, she had with her two precious jewel albums which she kept until her death in 1960 when they passed to her family. The two lavishly illustrated documents constitute a highly sentimental record of jewellery received between 1880 and 1912. Presented together, the 925 entries provide a fascinating insight into the private wealth of the Romanovs, their personal taste and family relationships. The albums illustrate the manner in which important occasions were marked and offer a crucial link to proving attribution and provenance for so many pieces later gifted, sold on by the Grand Duchess or seized by the Soviet authorities.
Of immense interest to historians, only a small number of select pages of the albums had been published in specialist books, and the albums remained largely private until they were offered at auction by Bonhams New Bond Street in 2011 (Bonham’s London, The Russian Sale, 30 November 2011, lot 155).
The albums themselves have prompted much debate among scholars who have sought to determine the overarching purpose of the tomes. It is notable that pieces the Grand Duchess purchased for herself are not itemised and while the pages are filled with her careful and exact notations, the texts do not emphasize the value of the stones or the name of the fashionable jeweller who had made or sold the piece. Rather, each carefully rendered drawing is usually accompanied by the briefest – and most heartfelt – of statements: “From Mama,” “From Papa,” or “From Sandro” (her husband, Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich).
It is little wonder that when the Grand Duchess had to flee revolutionary forces, she chose these books to accompany her. Akin to a photograph album or a journal, the albums acted as an aide-memoire, with each entry recording the generosity of beloved family members who had put every effort into finding pieces of jewellery which reflected the occasion of their presentation. Reciprocally, the Grand Duchess honoured each gift by carefully studying and recording its character with her considerable skill as a watercolourist.
NOTE: this article has been condensed from the original, pubished by Bonhams. Click HERE to read the entire article, and to view more photos from the jewel albums – PG
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Other Romanov jewel albums
It is interesting to note that according to the art historian, Dr Karen L. Kettering, a third album of Grand Duchess Xenia’s jewels exist, however, the album is in “private hands”. Kettering confirms that she has studied the albums since their sale in 2011.
Between 1889 and 1913 Nicholas II, painted his jewellery in a small album as a private record of his collection. In 1992, curator Tatiana Muntian announced that the Kremlin Archives had since 1922 held Nicholas II’s Jewel Album. In 1997 The Jewel Album of Nicholas II was published in full by Alexander von Solodkoff and Irina Bogatskaya, in a handsome clothbound edition with slipcase. It has since become a highly sought after collector’s item by those who share an interested in the life of Russia’s last Tsar.
It was also revealed that the Kremlin Archives also contained a jewellery album Empress Alexandra Fedorovna kept of pieces she had selected for family and friends.
In 1992, Sotheby’s Book and Manuscript Department in New York sold a jewel notebook that had been kept for several years by Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna the Younger.
Prompted by these discoveries, additional research was conducted in the Archives of Wolfsgarten Castle in Germany, where Empress Alexandra Feodorovna had spent part of her childhood, revealing a fifth jewel album her brother Grand Duke Ernest Ludwig had kept.
Training in drawing and watercolour was considered essential for the upbringing of any young lady or gentleman of distinction and most of the Romanov Grand Dukes and Duchesses were quite competent artists.
The discovery of these jewel albums continues to raise the question – are their others? How many other grand dukes and grand duchesses embraced the hobby of recording their personal collection of jewels in handsome leather albums?
Private collectors in Russia, Europe and even the United States as well as those of the now defunct royal houses of Europe, continue to find Romanov treasures lost or forgotten in old trunks, safes, and dusty shelves. Let us hope that other jewel albums surface from among their collections.
On Friday 10th March, a telephone belonging to Emperor Nicholas II was sold at a Sotheby’s auction. The Romanov Week auction featured more than 100 items belonging to members of the Russian Imperial Family.
The most expensive lot was a telephone belonging to Emperor Nicholas II, which sold for a staggering 2 million US dollars, almost five times over the estimate.
“It’s a unique device made in 1915 at the Russian-Baltic Wagon factory in Petrograd. The telephone was presented it to the Tsar during the First World War, who used it for communicating with the Empress at Tsarskoye Selo during his trips to General Headquarters (Stavka) at Mogilev,” said Sotheby’s representative Robert Jefferson.
Following the February 1917 Revolution the telephone was confiscated on the order of the Provisional Government and transferred to the custody of the chief of the Petrograd garrison.
Following the riots that swept the capital in July 1917, the telephone was later stolen during the Russian Civil War and smuggled to Europe.
NOTE: In 1896, the Swedish manufacturer of telecommunications equipment Ericsson, installed the first telephone for Emperor Nicholas II in the Grand Kremlin Palace in Moscow.
Only two medals were cast, each made of 300 grams of gold
On 24th March 2019, a rare and beautiful medal (300 grams of gold) marking the 1896 visit to Paris by Emperor Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, sold at auction for nearly €90,000 ($100,000 USD) at the Hôtel des Ventes de la Seine auction house in Rouen, France.
The gold medal was struck on 7th October 1896, on the occasion of the visit of Emperor Nicholas II and the Empress Alexandra to the Monnaie de Paris (Mint) with the president of the French Republic Felix Faure.
In competition were six buyers, all bidding over the telephone. Under the hammer of Mr. Guillaume Cheroyan, the object was sold to an annoymous Swiss buyer, for the tidy sum of € 73,000 (€ 89,060 with fees), and selling for more than double its initial estimate, set at € 30,000.
The profiles of the Imperial couple are engraved on the front by the famous Jules-Clément Chaplain. Only two copies of this diplomatic gift were made, one presented to Emperor Nicholas II, the second to President Felix Faure.
Its provenance, however, remains a mystery. “We are not certain,” admitted Cheroyan, however, he was optimistic that his hammer fell on one of the two copies presented to Nicholas II. Cheroyan noted that the seller – a local numismatist – had reported to the auctioneer that the medal had belonged to an émigré Russian aristocrat. “One can then imagine that, after Lenin nationalized the personal property of the Imperial family, that the Bolsheviks sold as many items as possible.”
This did not prevent him from sending an email to the Kremlin, to inform the Russian government of the sale of this 300 gold gram piece of Imperial Russia’s history.
Nicholas II 
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