En famille - three family groups

In his apartments at the Tuileries, Louis XVIII receives his nephew the duc d'Angoulême, victorious commander-in-chief of the Pyrenees Army. Standing beside the duc is his wife, "Madame Royale", Marie-Thérèse Charlotte, duchesse d'Angoulême; only surviving child of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, she had been married off to her first cousin while in exile in 1799. Behind the king is the comte d'Artois, the future Charles X, who holds in his arms his grandson, Henri-Charles-Ferdinand-Marie-Dieudonné d'Artois, duc de Bordeaux. The child was the only son - born posthumously - of the duc de Berry who had been assassinated in 1820. His widow, Marie-Caroline de Bourbon-Sicile, duchesse de Berry, stands beside her first surviving child, Louise-Marie-Thérèse d'Artois.

Louis XVIII recevant le duc d'Angoulême à son retour de la campagne d'Espagne (Louis XVIII receiving 

the duc d’Angoulême on his return from the campaign of Spain), by Antoine-Jean-Baptiste Thomas, 1823.

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За чайным столом (At the Tea Table), by Alexei Voloskov, 1851.

This group-portrait-as-conversation-piece was painted at the estate of Grigori Stepanovich Tarnovsky, Kachanivka/Kachanovka, Chernihiv Oblast, the Ukraine. In a room decorated with Gothic style motifs, Voloskov portrayed the owner of the estate seated at the table on the left. Leaning on the back of his chair, stands his brother (?)Vasili Tarnovsky, a prominent public figure on the peasant question, while seated across the table from him is his wife Lyudmila Vladimirovna. The girl in the white dress is Vasili's daughter, Yulia Vasilievna.

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Retrato da Família do 1.º Visconde de Santarém (Portrait of the Family of the 1st Viscount of Santarém), by Domingos Antonio Sequeira, 1816.

João Diogo de Barros Leitão Carvalhosa, the 1st Viscount of Santarém, is portrayed here with his second wife, their five children, and his younger brother, D. António Roberto, archbishop of Adrianopolis. The portrait hanging over the mantlepiece depicts his first-born son - from his first marriage - with his aunt and uncle, the Viscounts of Vila Nova da Rainha, sister and brother-in-law, respectively, of the Viscount of Santarém. The statuette on the table represents King João VI, who ascended the throne of Portugal in March 1816.

House proud - photographs of Mathilde Kschessinskaya and her mansion... and her son

These portraits were taken in 1916 - while the war raged on and only months before the start of the Revolution - the year Kschessinskaya turned forty-four. (It's possible they were taken on or near her birthday - the portraits and the photograph of her birthday presents were apparently both taken by Yakov Vladimirovich Steinberg in that year - but I haven't been able to confirm that.) Her son Vladimir - "Vova" - had turned fourteen that June. His father was a Romanov; exactly which one was the question. She had famously been the mistress of the future Nicholas II at the beginning of her career, a liason that only ended with his marriage. She then began a relationship with one of his cousins, Grand Duke Sergei Mikhailovich. He was devoted to her and did much to further her position within the Mariinsky company, but only a few years later she fell in love, beginning a relationship with yet a third Romanov cousin, Grand Duke Andrei Vladimirovich. Sergei managed to accept the situation, and the ménage à trois endured for almost two decades. Things became much more complicated in 1902, though, when Kschessinskaya gave birth to a son, both men convinced that they were Vova's father. Sergei, who had remained close to both mother and son, was murdered by the Bolsheviks in 1918. Kschessinskaya and Andrei were married in Cannes in 1921 and Vova was legitimized as Andrei's son. The latter was later given the title Prince Romanovsky-Krasinsky, and though he probably did in fact resemble Andrei more than Sergei, even he admitted that he was never quite sure which was his true father.

In these images the lady of the house is posing in the white hall and the adjacent winter garden.

With Vova in the winter garden.

Kschessinskaya's birthday presents, 19/31 August 1916.

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This image looks to have been taken before the ironwork was added to the top of the fence posts and on the arch of the gate.

Still standing on Troitskaya Square in St. Petersburg, Kschessinskaya's mansion was built between 1904 and 1906 to the designs of architect Alexander von Gogen and his assistant Alexander Dmitriev, in close collaboration with their client:

“I commissioned the plan from a very famous Petersburg architect, Alexander Ivanovich von Gogen, and placed him in charge of construction. Before designing the plan we discussed together the arrangement of the rooms according to my mind and life style. I outlined the interior décor of the rooms as well. The hall was supposed to be tailored in Russian Imperial style, a small corner salon – in Louie XVI style, the rest of the rooms I left to the architect’s taste and then chose what I liked most of all. I ordered the bedroom and the closet in English style with white furniture and cretonne on the walls. Some rooms, such as the dining room and the salon next to it, were designed in an art nouveau style. All the period furniture and furniture for my private rooms and for the rooms of my son I ordered from Melzer.”

Built on a not terribly grand scale, it was still a notable example of St. Petersburg Art Nouveau. Kschessinskaya fled the building in the revolutionary turmoil of Februay 1917; the following month, the ascendant Bolsheviks requisitioned the mansion, making it their headquarters. After his return from exile in April, Lenin would work there, and from its balcony make some of his best-known rabble-rousing speeches. It later became home to the Museum of the October Revolution which has been, since the fall of the Soviet Union, renamed the Museum of Political History, just a handful of its rooms restored to their pre-Revolutionary glamour.

The bedroom.

The bathroom. (Two images.)

The nursery.

The Louis XVI-style salon.

A corner of the drawing room.

The buffet and dining room.

The white hall.

The winter garden.

A ball at Versailles - two watercolors by Victor Joseph Chavet, 1855

In August 1855 Queen Victoria and Prince Albert spent ten days in Paris at the invitation of Napoléon III and the Empress Eugénie. The state visit was meant to celebrate the military alliance between Britain and France during the Crimean War, and followed a visit by the imperial couple to Windsor in April of that same year. On 25 August there was a ball at the Château de Versailles, the first to be held there since the French Revolution. There were twelve hundred guests, and Queen Victoria described the Galerie des Glaces as "full of people & one blaze of light from endless lustres, wreaths of flowers hanging down from the ceiling."

The Overture to the Ball in the Galerie des Glaces, Versailles, 25 August 1855.

Standing at right is Princess Mathilde, cousin of the Emperor, with Prince Albert. Behind them is Princess Mathilde's brother, Prince Napoléon, "Plon-Plon";
both men wear the red sash of the Légion d'honneur. At far right is Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, the future Edward VII.

Queen Victoria stands with the Emperor - both wearing the blue riband of the Order of the Garter; he had been invested during the Imperial couple's visit to Great
Britain four months previously - along with her daughter Victoria, Princess Royal. The Empress is seated behind them. After a previous miscarriage, the Empress
was newly pregnant with what would be her first and only child, and special allowance was made for her - literally - delicate condition.

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The Promenade in the Galerie des Glaces, Versailles, 25 August, 1855.

The second watercolor shows the procession through the Galerie, which continued into the State Apartments and through the north wing to the Opéra royal, where supper was served.

Queen Victoria and the Emperor are followed by the Empress and Prince Albert, then by other members of both families.

The two watercolors by Victor Joseph Chavet (1822-1906) were a gift from the French Emperor and Empress to their British counterparts, Christmas, 1855.

The stand-in as star - paintings of mannequins by Alan Beeton, circa 1927-31

Reposing II (?)

The painter Alan Beeton seemed to almost go out of his way to avoid attracting attention to his work or to himself. One of the few times notice found him anyway came when he showed a series of paintings of a mannequin, an artist's lay figure. Four in particular, painted in 1928 and 1929, caught the public's and critics' attention: Posing, Composing, Reposing, and Decomposing. Posing and Decomposing were exhibited at the Royal Academy in May 1929, and all four were exhibited in the Oldham Gallery in 1930. The reviewer for The Observer wrote:

"It is not so much to the magnificent of array of works by Rembrandt and Hals that the Dutch Exhibition [I assume this relates to a contemporary exhibition] owes its great popularity, but rather to the minute technical perfection and intimate charm of the ‘small masters’. Again and again I have heard the question raised ”Why can’t people paint like that nowadays?”. It was my pleasant experience last week to see in a friend’s studio a series of four little pictures by a living British artist for whom it may be boldly claimed that he has nothing to learn from Vermeer or Terborch or Metsu. The artist’s name is Alan Beeton."

Posing.

Composing.

Reposing.

Decomposing.

I found four more of the mannequin paintings, though I was unable to find images of them that were anything like a decent size; I did try...!

A group of his mannequin paintings was included in an exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum that opened in 2014 - Silent Partners: Artist & Mannequin from Function to Fetish - as well as the original mannequin, restored with the help of three specialists. While researching the exhibition, curator Jane Munro tracked down Beeton’s subject:

"It took years of research, a modicum of detective work and a series of happy coincidences to track it down. Its nose was broken and crudely repaired by a well-meaning amateur sculptress, and its hands and fingers torn and tattered from age, use and abuse. My first sight of it was in the workshop of one of the artist’s descendants, seated on a battered wickerwork chair, dressed comfortably in baggy trousers and a moth-eaten polo neck jumper; on its head was an unbecoming ladies’ wig. For all that, it exuded a warm, benign expression and seemed as relaxed and nonchalant as it appears in many of Beeton's paintings."

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Alan Beeton (8 February 1880, London - 20 December 1942), British artist. The son of wealthy parents, he attended Trinity College, Cambridge, but left after the second year to work at being an artist full time. Circa 1900 he moved to Paris for three years where he met fellow artist Gerald Kelly who was to become his closest friend. When World War I began, he joined first as a private in the infantry, then as a captain in the Royal Engineers, before joining the Camouflage Unit, a group of artists working in a small factory just behind the front line. It was a dangerous job and he would be awarded the Military Cross - twice mentioned in dispatches - and the Croix de Guerre. It was in the unit that he met his future wife, Geneste. They married after the war, setting up a home for themselves and their family in London. His work was focused on portraits and still-lifes, but because of his family's money, he was never ambitious in furthering his career and only painted what interested him. He lived a very quiet life and approached his art-making in a very workman-like manner, fussing over the same paintings often for years. Illness would eventually slow him, but he worked until the very end. After his death at the age of sixty-two, his family found a large trove of his paintings stored in his studio, paintings never seen, work that hadn't risen to his level of perfectionism.