Lot 48: Timofei Andreevich von Neff, 1805-1876

Timofei Andreevich von Neff, 1805-1876
a bathing nude: a portrait of princess ekaterina mikhailovna dolgorouka
oil on panel, in original elaborate carved gilt-wood frame
signed middle right
excluding frame: 80 by 55cm., 31I by 21Nin.

Ekaterina Dolgoruka was the mistress and later morganatic wife of Emperor Alexander II. She was born on 14th December 1847, the daughter of Prince Michael Dolgorouky; she first met the Tzar in 1857 when he attended military manoevres in Volhynia and stayed at her father's mansion at Tieplovka. Prince Michael was a spendthrift who died a bankrupt and the Tsar took it upon himself to become the guardian of his children and to ensure their education. The boys went to military academies and the girls at the Smolny Institute. Alexander regularly visited the Smolny, where he saw and conversed with Ekaterina, eventually declaring his love for her when they met during one of his habitual walks in the Summer Gardens of St. Petersburg.

In 1866 she became his mistress with their first intimate meeting, taking place in the 12th June at the Belvedere Pavilion near Peterhof. The following year their affair became widely known and Alexander promised that as soon as he was free, he would marry her. She was seventeen he was forty-seven. Extremely discrete, Ekaterina was rarely seen in public and in May 1872 gave birth to her first son George, and in November the following year to a daughter, Olga. Several months after this, Alexander passed a secret ukaz by which the children were raised to the rank of the Prince and Princess and allowed to use the patronymic Alexandrovich.

Increasingly aware of the risk to his life from terrorist revolutionaries, when his consort Empress Maria Feodorovna died on 3rd June 1880, he lost little time legitimizing Ekaterina's position, he married Ekaterina after the briefest period of mourning, at a simple ceremony held in an apartment at Tsarskoe-Selo on the 18th July. Alexander conferred the title Most Serene Highness Princess Yourievsky on Ekaterina, and the children were legitimized. It is widely believed that it was Alexander's intention to crown her as his consort.

Alexander II was assassinated on 13th March 1881, and whilst his body lay in state, the distraught Princess cut off her long hair and placed the tresses in the hands of her dead husband. The following year she left with her family for France, and in 1888 she settled in Nice where she lived until her death in 1922. Her estate was sold at auction at Hotel Drouot in Paris on the 6th June 1931 and at the Hotel Savoy in Nice, in the summer of 1941.

Neff was well known for his rather idealized society portraits and the present image of Ekaterina Dolgorouka should be compared with a group of fourteen photographs of her taken at various stages of her life. Prior to the birth of her son George in 1872, her elaborate hairstyle was identical to as it is in the Neff's portrait. (See Prince George Yourievsky (intro.) Alexander II in Tsarskoe Seloe, St. Petersburg, 2000, for a comparable photographic image of her, taken in Paris in 1867).

The Pompeian decoration in the background is also characteristic of Imperial country houses of the period most especially those built by Stakenschneider, and similar designs are to be found in the Belevedere Pavilion.

Timofei Andreievich Neff was painter to the Imperial Court; the favourite artist of Nicholas I and during his lifetime was hugely fashionable both in Russia and Europe. He was born on the Morders estate in Estonia, Karl Karlovich Morders being the principal tutor to the children of Nicholas I. Whilst studying at the Dresden Academy he travelled to Rome (1823-24) where he came into contact with the Nazarene artists. He arrived in St. Petersburg in 1826 was nominated Painter to the Imperial Court in 1832. In 1839 he was honoured as an Academician for his work on the small chapel of the Winter Palace.

(We are indebted to Dimitri Matlin of the Alexander Historical Society St.Petersburg, for his help in cataloguing this lot.)