Lot 286: Piotr Sokolov (1787-1848)

Piotr Sokolov (1787-1848)
Portrait of Empress Alexandra Feodorovna and her daughter Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna at the seashore
signed 'Socoloff' (lower right)
pencil and watercolour, heightened with white, on paper laid down on thick card
12 7/8 x 16 7/8 in. (32.6 x 42.8 cm.)
Executed in 1829

Brussels, Palais des Beaux-Arts de Bruxelles, Exposition d'Art Russe ancien et moderne, May - June 1928, no. 238.
Paris, Centenaire de Pouchkine, Exposition Pouchkine et son Époque , 1937.
Moscow, Museum of Private Collections, Pushkin's Contemporaries: 100 Portraits in Watercolour from a Parisian Collection, May - July 1999. Moscow, Pushkin Museum, 'I see myself as if in a mirror...' Contemporaries of A. C. Pushkin in the Portraits of P. F. Sokolov, 2003, no. 108.
Moscow, Museum of Private Collections, 'Parisian Discoveries' of Pushkin's Era: In Commemoration of 100 Years Since the Birth of I. S. Zilberstein, 2005, no. 11.

Exhibition catalogue, Exposition d'Art Russe ancien et moderne,
Brussels, Palais des Beaux-Arts de Bruxelles, 1928, p. 50, no. 238. I. S. Zilberstein, 'Parisian Discoveries' of Pushkin's Era, Moscow, 1993, p. 97.
M. Baruch & I. Sakharova, Russian Portraits in Watercolour, 1825-1855, Paris, 1994, p. 149, illustrated p. 150.
Exhibition catalogue, Piotr Feodorovich Sokolov. Russian intimate Portraits, Moscow, Pushkin Museum, 2003, illustrated p. 87, no. 108.
Exhibition catalogue, 'Parisian Discoveries' of Pushkin's Era: In Commemoration of 100 Years Since the Birth of I. S. Zilberstein, Moscow, Museum of Private Collections, 2005, illustrated p. 65, no. 11.

E. E. Reytern.

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Considered by many to be the most exquisite work by Piotr Sokolov, this watercolour depicts the Empress Alexandra Feodorovna (1798-1860), born Princess Charlotte of Prussia, and her eldest daughter, the Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna (1819-1876) to whom she was devoted. Sokolov has captured the delicate features and frail beauty of the Empress who in Berlin in the autumn of 1814 ensnared the heart of the Grand Duke Nicholas Pavlovich of Russia, the future Nicholas I. The third cousins (both Alexandra and Nicholas were the great-great-grandchildren of Frederick William I of Prussia) fell deeply in love; after the Winter Palace was nearly destroyed in 1837, Nicholas reportedly told an aide-de-camp, 'Let everything else burn up, only just save for me the small case of letters in my study which my wife wrote to me when she was my betrothed.' For the first eight years of their relationship the pair had no aspirations to royalty; Tsar Alexander I was without issue and it was not until 1822 that the incumbent heir, the Grand Duke Constantin Pavlovich, renounced his succession rights making Nicholas the new Tsarevich.
Four other portraits of the Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna (captured here aged ten) are offered as part of this collection. For further information about the Grand Duchess, see lot 477.

Probably one of the best watercolours executed by Piotr Sokolov, it has always been considered as a 'pièce maitresse' in all the Russian exhibitions where it has been presented.