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| Reduced version of the portrait by François Flameng, inscribed as being painted at Ilinskoe, the country estate of the Grand Duchess and her husband, 1894. |
Back in "the good old days" before such wanton excess was rightly frowned upon, royalty and the aristocracy loved donning "fancy dress." Whether to attend a costume ball, pose in tableaux vivants, or indulge in private amateur theatricals, they had the leisure and also the budgets to support such glamorous frivolity. The Romanovs were no different. The Grand Duchess Elisaveta Feodorovna - wife of Grand Duke Sergei, uncle of the last tsar; sister of the last tsaritsa; granddaughter of Queen Victoria - was considered the most beautiful and best-dressed member of the family. Ella, as she was known to her intimates, was of an "artistic bent", and it should come as no surprise that she was often the star of the family theatricals - and easily the most lovely.
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| As is obvious by comparison with the images below, the sleeves in the portrait have been enlarged to better reflect the styles of the 1890s. |
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| I don't know the occasion for which this lovely Empire style gown was created, but she chose to be portrayed wearing it in Flameng's portrait. |
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| Ella with her nephew-by-marriage, the future Nicholas II - also her future brother-in-law - in a performance (?) of "Eugene Onegin", 1890. |
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| The Grand Duchess was Tatiana to Nicholas' Onegin. |
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| I think she is particularly beautiful here. And the costume is exactly right and perfectly suited to her. |
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| She had performed with the Tsarevich before, in 1886; supposedly this was a portrayal of "Hamlet"...? |
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| The costumes seem a highly unlikely choice for "Hamlet". |
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| With her husband, Grand Duke Sergei, dressed for quite the most famous Romanov costume ball, the Winter Palace "Boyar Ball" of 1903. |
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| As a seventeenth-century boyarina, many of her personal jewels have been sewn onto her costume. |
Interesting to see photos of Nicholas II so young. And his coloring in these brings out his resemblance to his parents, particularly his mother. The Grand Duchess herself ended so tragically murdered by the Bolsheviks in 1918. She was cannonized as a saint in by the Russian Othodox Church.
ReplyDeleteHer Empire costume in the portrait puts me in mind of those "Regency" costume paintings so popular with some late 19th Century English and American painters. With all the technological change in the mid 19th Century, the early days of the 1800s must have had a very romantic, simplistic appeal to later generations.
Interesting what you say about the late nineteenth century nostalgia for the Regency/Empire period. And François Flameng, the very fashionable painter of her portrait here, was equally as well known for just those sort of costume paintings you mention. : )
DeleteHow could I doubt she was Gangan‘s granddaughter? Just look at her nose...
ReplyDeleteYikes!
What do you mean?
DeleteShe's comparing the length/narrowness of her nose to that of her grandmother, Queen Victoria.
DeleteHello! Just wondered if it be possible to add where you obtained these beautiful images from (particularly the theatrical photographs of Eugene Onegin and Hamlet)? I'm a postgraduate student and would love to be able to study these images further, but am struggling to find locations for the originals. :)
ReplyDeleteI got your email, Alice; I'll respond in a minute via that route.
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