When a Romanov puts on a swimsuit - le prince Théodore Alexandrovitch de Russie à la plage

All these photographs are believed to have been taken in the south of France, circa first half of the 1920s.

Prince Feodor Alexandrovich (23 December 1898, St. Petersburg - 30 November 1968, Ascain), the second son of Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna (elder sister of the last Tsar) and Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich, he reached manhood just as Russia devolved into revolution, and his family was forced into exile. He was tall - more than six foot four inches - athletic and handsome; he had something of Gary Cooper about him, and something of Cooper's earnest, boyish charm. He was apparently a simple soul, liked to work with his hands. He was also probably not possessed of the most brilliant intellect. And he certainly was rather inept at making his way in the world; throughout his life he was rarely able to find and maintain steady employment or sufficient income. His only sister, Irina, was the wife of Prince Felix Yusupov, and Feodor spent much of the early Twenties living with the couple in Paris, traveling in Italy, Corsica, England. In 1923, he married his first cousin once removed, Princess Irina Pavlovna Paley, the morganatic daughter of the murdered Grand Duke Paul Alexandrovich. The couple had a son the following year. But the marriage proved a failure; Irina had an affair with a French count, whose daughter she bore in 1934, and she and Feodor were divorced two years later. In the aftermath of the affair, Feodor went to America, was unhappy there and, after more professional disappointments, he returned to England where, heading into his forties, he settled with his mother. During World War II, still in England, he developed tuberculosis; by the end of the War, he was gravely ill. With the support of his sister and brother-in-law, he returned to France, arriving in Paris on a stretcher; the doctor's prognosis was that death might be imminent. Instead, he was sent to a little house in the Basque region where, supported by his family, he spent the next twenty years, surviving to the age of seventy.

With his wife, née Princess Irina Paley, and her sister, Princess Natalia Paley, later the wife of couturier Lucien Lelong.

With his brother (on the left) Prince Nikita Alexandrovich.

With his brother Nikita (center) and Nikita's wife, née Countess Maria Illarionovna Vorontsova-Dashkova.

Irina on Corsica

Princess Irina Yusupova, only niece of the last tsar, and her husband, the notorious Prince Felix Yusupov, fared better than most after having fled revolutionary Russia in 1919. They hadn't a shadow of their former wealth, but they had a home in Paris and sufficient capital to afford them a quite comfortable lifestyle and allow them to be very generous with those emigrés who were less fortunate. They also had a rather ramshackle house at Calvi on the island of Corsica.* In her second memoir, "A Princess in Exile", Irina's cousin, Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna, who visited with them there, describes it as a "ridiculous half-tumbledown building" and a "shack", and said that there was little to eat, no proper water supply, and "appalling" sanitary conditions. She also mentions that they all managed to have a very good time.

With an unidentified companion at left.

With her brother, Prince Feodor Alexandrovich.

With Feodor and two other gentlemen.

With an unidentified companion.

***

* Since I found most of these images uncaptioned, I can't promise that they were all taken on Corsica. In some cases I'm making an educated guess. At any rate, they were taken someplace warm and sunny and at least a bit rustic, someplace that decidedly isn't Paris.

Randomly

Jupiter Disguised as Diana Seducing Callisto, by Gerrit van Honthorst, circa 1625-1650.

I have a blog-post folder and several sub-folders on my computer. As I flounce about the internet, whenever I find an image, anything I find beautiful or intriguing, I copy it - if I can - and toss it into one of my blog-related folders. Perhaps you can guess where this acquisitiveness has led me. The folders are now very full. So full that I have ever more difficulty finding, sorting things. Difficulty seeing the visual or thematic threads that I would gather together to make up a post. So, along with better organizing - yet more sub-folders - from now on, every so often I'll try and do a bit of theme-less, story-less sharing. These, then, are some images I really enjoy. That is all!

The Marriage of Napoléon I and Marie Louise, 2 April 1810, by Georges Rouget, 1811.

Miniature by Adélaïde Labille-Guiard, circa late 1780s.

Photograph identified as being taken in Tokyo during the Thirties.

Mirza Abu'l Hassan Khan, Ambassador for the Shah of Persia, by William Beechey, 1809 or 1810.

Portrait of a Young Woman, by Giovanni Battista Moroni, circa 1560s-70s.

Irina Alexandrovna, Princess Yusupova, by Edward Steichen, 1924.

Lydia Pickering Williams, by Gilbert Stuart, 1824.

Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier, Catalina, 1939.

Elisabeth Farnese, Princess of Parma and Queen of Spain, by Jean Ranc, 1723.

The Surprise, by Claude-Marie Dubufe, before 1827.

The Guitarist, by Jean-Baptiste Greuze, 1757.

Augusta, Duchess of Cambridge, by William Beechey, 1818.

Michèle Morgan, circa 1941.

Jean-Louis Buisson-Boissier, by Jean-Étienne Liotard, circa 1762-66.

Carolina Grassi and Bianca Bignami, the sisters Gabrini, by Francesco Hayez,1835.

St. Petersburg (?), circa prior to 1914.

Louis-Philippe Refuses the Crown of Belgium, 17 February 1831, by Nicolas Gosse, 1836.

Miniature by Louis-Lié Périn-Salbreux, circa 1790s.

Felix in exile

Felix Yusupov - sole heir to pre-Revolutionary Russia's greatest private fortune, youthful transvestite, homosexual (or at least bisexual), improbable husband to the last Tsar's only niece - is most famous - infamous - as the instigator of the plot against and murder of Rasputin. But what came after?

The notorious and grisly murder was a last desperate act, in the midst of World War I, to try and save the mortally ill Russian monarchy. Too little, too late; the Revolution was only three months away. Felix and his wife, Irina, were able to take refuge in the relatively calm Crimea, where they joined other fortunate aristocrats and members of the Romanov family, including Irina's immediate family and her grandmother, the Dowager Empress.

On the deck of the HMS Marlborough,leaving Russia in 1919.

In April of 1919, as the Civil War threatened, the whole group was evacuated, boarding an English warship sent by the Dowager Empress' nephew, King George V. The Yusupovs would settle in Paris. Through luck and some foresight, Felix and Irina were quite a bit better off than the majority of the Russian émigrés. They had jewels to sell, like so many others, but Felix had also managed to bring two Rembrandts out of Russia. They also had possessions and property in England and France. Felix became known for his great kindness and generosity to his fellow transplanted Russians.

Felix and his daughter, also named Irina, but always called Bébé.

I don't know who the painter is, but the results don't look too promising.

In 1924 Felix and Irina opened a couture house in Paris. Maison Irfé, named after the first two initials of his and his wife's first names, also became known for its line of perfumes, and they went on to open branches in Touquet and London before closing the business in 1931, mostly as a result of the world-wide Depression. The next year, by now in financial difficulties themselves, the couple brought a lawsuit against the film studio MGM, claiming that a character in the film "Rasputin and the Empress" - a heavily fictionalized account of the last days of the Romanovs and the murder of Rasputin - too closely resembled Princess Irina, and that the character's rape by Rasputin - in fact, Irina had never even met him - constituted libel. They won, and in 1934 were awarded a huge settlement.

In London in 1932, during the trial against MGM. (Three images.)

1950.

1952.

In 1927 Felix had written a book about Rasputin and his own involvement in the murder, and then an autobiography, "Lost Splendour" - not entirely trustworthy, but fascinating and well-written - first published in French in 1952 as "Avant l'Exil". Though an unusual pairing, and though Felix apparently had many male attachments through the years, he and Irina had a very happy marriage and a strong bond which lasted until his death in 1967, at the age of eighty.

(Finally, the comb-over has been abandoned.)

In his final home, at 38, Rue Pierre-Guérin in the 16th arrondissement of Paris, surrounded by possessions and family portraits.

In 1966, the year before his death.

Felix on his deathbed. (Two images.)

Irina, at Felix's funeral; she would live only three years more.

As someone who was so obviously troubled by the loss of his youth and beauty - the lingering comb-over and the obvious maquillage say all that needs to be said on that topic - Felix may have been making a subconscious reference to his own aging appearance and not merely his vanished wealth when he agreed to his memoir's English-language title, "Lost Splendour". As someone who sympathizes greatly with his desperate efforts, I think it only kind to end this post with a treasured image of Felix in the glory of his sixteen year old self, as immortalized by Serov.

Portrait by Valentin Serov, 1903.