The Empress Auguste Viktoria, 1913

This image is obviously a page taken from a magazine of the time.

Auguste Viktoria (October 22, 1858, Dolzig Palace, in what is now Lubsko, Poland – April 11, 1921, Huis Doorn, the Netherlands), born Auguste Viktoria Friederike Luise Feodora Jenny von Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg, last German Empress and Queen Consort of Prussia.

She married the future Emperor Wilhelm II in 1881, and gave him seven children, six sons and a daughter.  Known in the family as "Dona", she and her husband were well matched; she was the model of the devoted, submissive wife, happily acquiescing to his whims and taking on his prejudices and grudges against, among others, his own mother and siblings.  Her usual placidity and her markedly unintellectual nature earned her little respect within the extended family, but she was beloved by the public, who saw her as the epitome of the good German wife and mother.

After the debacle of World War I, the Emperor's abdication and exile, and the subsequent suicide of her youngest son, her health declined rapidly and she died at the age of sixty-two.

The dress and most of the jewelry is the same as in the picture above, but the necklaces are different.

***

The diadem that the Empress is wearing in both photographs.  It was made by the jeweler Koch and was
commissioned in 1906 in honor of the Imperial couple's twenty-fifth wedding anniversary.  Some of the
elements were removed in 1950 for use in other jewelry.)

Stand and deliver - L'Amoureux argenté

Tonight I'm going to a private reception at the Portland Art Museum, to stand in front of my little painting and introduce it officially to the Northwest Art Council. I don't really know what I'm going to say yet. Hopefully something interesting and maybe a bit amusing. And please let me be graceful and gracious, and keep my wretched tendency for (sometimes awkward) frankness in check.

The painting has been on exhibition for a few months now, but just last week it was added to the museum's database. And so was I. My name, date of birth, and the descriptive "American". Of course it shouldn't suprise me to be referred to as an American but, honestly, it did. I rarely think of my self in those terms. I guess I'm not very nationalistic. Really, not much at all; I have a more "what have you done for me lately" kind of allegiance to things. But mostly, at least when we're speaking of my art, my influences are anything but American. My aesthetic is almost entirely European. Rather obviously. But everyone is a product of their environment, to some degree at least. Even if they're running in the opposite direction. So I wonder what there might be about my work that could show out my origins. If one were to show someone a selection of my work, but with but no attribution, would they somehow know I was a product of the United States?

Grand escalier d'honneur, Palais des Tuileries - two views

Watercolor by Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, 1839.

Still remarkably intact after the fire that destroyed the palace, 1871.  (The ruined palace was nonetheless demolished in 1883.)

Two unpopular kings by Thomas Lawrence

George IV of the United Kingdom in his coronation robes, 1821.

Charles X of France, 1825.

George IV, had long been the regent for his father, the indisposed George III, when he finally became king in 1821; the Regency period is named for those years that he was Prince Regent. All his adult life he had been unpopular as a result of his scandalous personal life, his inattention to duty, and his outrageous extravagance in dress and building; he was constantly in debt. The British public only had to endure him for ten more years before his lifelong excesses finally did him in at the age of sixty-seven.

Charles X, who was known for most of his life as the comte d'Artois, was the last of the senior-line Bourbon kings. The younger brother of the deposed and executed Louis XVI, and successor of the middle brother who reigned, post-Napoléon, as Louis XVIII, in his youth he was know for his extravagance and reckless lifestyle.  After becoming king in 1824, he proved to be increasingly reactionary, and the regime quickly grew more and more unpopular, finally leading to the "July Revolution" of 1830. He had ruled for less than six years before he was forced to abdicate and flee to England, then Prague, then Slovenia, where he died of cholera in 1836, at the age of seventy-nine.

Thomas Lawrence, see here.

Two sons of the artist, by Ivan Kramskoi

Anatoly Ivanovich Kramskoi, 1882.

Ivan Nikolaevich Kramskoi (June 8, 1837, Ostrogozhsk – April 6, 1887, Saint Petersburg), Russian painter and art critic.  A leader of the Peredvizhniki, called The Wanderers or The Itinerants in English, a group of Russian realist, Slavophile, populist artists who came together in reaction to the constraints of the conservative Imperial Academy of Arts.  He was also a well-known portrait painter.

Sergei Ivanovich Kramskoi, 1883.

Dietrich - before the glamour and after

Circa mid-1920s.

Circa mid-1960s.

The Family of Christian IX, by Laurits Tuxen, 1886

Click to view larger.

Laurits Tuxen (December 9, 1853, Copenhagen – November 21, 1927, Copenhagen), a Danish painter. He was best known for his group portraits of the interconnected royal families of Denmark, Great Britain, Russia, and Greece, and for his thickly peopled scenes of coronations and royal weddings.

Christian IX (April 8, 1818, Schleswig – January 29, 1906, Copenhagen) and his wife, Louise of Hesse (September 7, 1817, Kassel – September 29, 1898, Bernstorff Castle), were king and queen of Denmark from 1863 to 1906. Because of the remarkable dynastic successes of their children, they became known as "The Grandfather and Grandmother of Europe". Their second son, William, was elected King of the Hellenes in 1863, taking the name George I. The same year their eldest daughter married the Prince of Wales, eventually becoming Queen Alexandra of Great Britain. And in 1866, their middle daughter, Dagmar, married the Russian Tsarevich; in 1881, she became the Empress Maria Feodorovna and was the mother of the last tsar, Nicholas II.

The Russian Imperial couple and their youngest son, Mikhail, whose pose differs from that in the finished painting.

The Danish Royal couple and all six of their children were extremely close. As the children married and started families of their own, some of them in different countries, they continued to regularly gather en masse, bringing their spouses and numerous offspring. So it was not at all unusual for the kings of Denmark and Greece, the Tsar of Russia, and the future King of England to be temporarily housed - not all of them entirely willingly - under the same roof. The roof in question was that of Fredensborg Palace, the country estate of the Danish Royal family; the summer days spent together were known amongst the family as the "Fredensborg days".  Tuxen was the artist of choice to commemorate the celebrations of this vast and loving family.  This group portrait was painted in the Havesalen - the Garden Hall - of the palace during the "Fredensborg days" of 1883 to 1886.

There are reduced versions (with variations) of this painting and several preparatory sketches; some may have been worked up after the fact as proper works in themselves.

Reduced version.  (Notice that Grand Duke Mikhail, at the center of the painting, is in a different position than in the original.)

(Grand Duke Mikhail's position in the original.)

Sketch.

The British Royal couple with their elder son, Prince Albert Victor.

The Danish Royal couples youngest daughter, Thyra, Duchess
of Cumberland, with her one of her daughters.

The future Tsar Nicholas II.

The Danish Crown Princess Louise with
one of her daughters.

Group including the three Wales daughters and some of their
Russian and Danish cousins.

Reference photograph of the Danish Royal couple.

Reference photograph of the Russian Imperial couple.

Reference photograph of Empress Maria Feodorovna.

Three vintage views of the Havesalen of Fredensborg Palace.

Fredensborg Palace today.

Princess Victoria as a cherub, a miniature by Sir William Ross, 1841

This miniature is less than two and a half inches in diameter.

Sir William Charles Ross (June 3, 1794, London – Jan 20, 1860, London), English portrait and portrait miniature painter.  Early in his career, he was known for historical paintings, but is now best remembered as a miniaturist, much patronized by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.  He became a member of the Royal Academy in 1842.  His brother, Hugh, and sister, Magdalene, were also successful miniaturists.

Princess Victoria (November 21, 1840, London – August 5, 1901, Kronberg), born Victoria Adelaide Mary Louisa, known in the family as Vicky, eldest child of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.  Made Princess Royal in 1841, she was later German Empress and Queen of Prussia by way of her marriage to German Emperor Friedrich III.  After her husband's death, she was most often referred to as the Empress Frederick.

Adored by both her parents and highly intelligent, she was given an excellent education, far in advance of what was usual for girls at the time.  Although it was a love match, her 1858 marriage at the age of seventeen to the future Crown Prince of Prussia, was also an important dynastic union, fully encouraged by her parents, who hoped it would support the emergence of a more liberal, unified Germany.  She went to Prussia inculcated by Prince Albert with a modernizing, liberalizing zeal, that was fully shared by her new husband.  The reality of stubborn Prussian conservatism was a great shock to her, and in her strong desire to bring about positive change at court and in society, she was met with active resistance and resentment; from the time of her arrival in Berlin, her life was often marked by disappointment and frustration.

In 1888 her father-in-law, Emperor Wilhelm I, died.  Thirty years after their marriage, she and her husband were finally in a position to implement the many reforms they had long dreamed of making but, tragically, the new emperor was already ill with the cancer that would kill him; his was a reign of only ninety-nine days.  His successor was their neurotic, alienated son, the infamous Wilhelm II, who was often perversely unkind to his mother, and who reacted strongly against the progressive political beliefs of his parents  The Empress Frederick had a long battle with cancer, herself, before she died in 1901 - six months after her mother, and thirteen years before her son, "Kaiser Bill", led the world into World War I.

***

This miniature was painted by Ross when Princess Victoria was just eleven months old.

Ross' technique and draftsmanship is remarkable.  And his sense of color, delicious:  the vivid blues, the fresh, bright flesh tones, the washes of pink on the wings and in the sky and the faintest tinge of blue around the eyes.  It was certainly unusual at the time to make a portrait of a small child in the guise of a cherub; an angelically themed representation of a child would most often signify that the child had died.  This little girl most certainly had not, and would go on to live an eventful, sometimes difficult, life.

(Interesting, if you look closely, it appears that Ross may have painted a halo over the child's head, then decided to
paint it out; did he think that was taking things just too far?)

Carl Trees, by Horst P. Horst, 1937

Horst P. Horst (August 14, 1906, Weißenfels-an-der-Saale – November 18, 1999, Palm Beach Gardens), born Horst Paul Albert Bohrmann, German-American fashion and portrait photographer.

Carl Trees, from what little I can tell, was a performer in musical comedies on Broadway in the late 30s and early 40s.

Afternoon dress, circa 1866

Silk afternoon dress bearing the label "Maison Clément, Delion Lericheux Sr., 8. Place de la Madeleine, Paris", circa 1866.

The main silk fabric of the dress has an interesting gravelly texture.

I especially like the decoration on the back of the bodice; one should always be as charming leaving a room as when entering.