Alexei Petrovich Bogoliubov

The Collection of Grand Duke Nikolai Alexandrovich, 1863-65
Imperial Collection of Tsar Alexander III (from 1865 in the Anichkov Palace; from 1870 in Alexander Palace at Tsarskoe Selo)
Alexander Palace-Museum, 1917-1931

Catalogue of Paintings belonging to His Imperial Highness and Inheritor to the Tsar, 1872, no.7
Catalogue of Paintings of Alexander Palace, 1880-1890, no.4/7
V.Yakovlev, Alexander Palace-Museum in Detskoe Selo, Konvoliut, 1927-1928

This painting is in beautiful, if not perfect, condition and is framed in its beautiful and original frame. The canvas has never been removed from its original stretcher, is unlined and has probably never been cleaned or damaged. If the canvas were lightly cleaned, the palette would brighten, but no retouches are likely to be required. Held in original gold painted ornate plaster frame. Unexamined out of frame.
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In 1863, Grand Duke Nikolai Alexandrovich (fig.3) set off on his second grand tour of Russia in the company of Count Stroganoff and Alexei Bogoliubov, who acted as a cultural guide. The present work is one of 25 oil paintings documenting the Grand Duke’s travels which Bogoliubov had been commissioned to paint. In his travel notes Bogoliubov recalls the encounter of the royal party with General Grabbe, the chief of the Cossack troops, on a steamship on the Don. The epaulettes of the figure standing on deck at the very centre of Bogoliubov's composition suggest this may be the Grand Duke himself.

Bogoliubov was close to the Imperial family, even providing drawing and painting lessons to the future Tsar Alexander III and his wife Princess Dagmar. He later became the Tsar’s chief advisor on art collecting. The collection which Alexander III accumulated numbered as many as eight hundred items, and was displayed in several of the Imperial Palaces. In 1870, as a sign of the recognition he accorded to his teacher and mentor, Alexander III hung around 30 of Bogoliubov’s finest canvases in the dining hall of the Alexander palace and called this room ‘Bogoliubov’s Hall’. The present work was part of this ensemble. From 1917 it remained in the Alexander Palace Museum, until it was sold in 1931 together with many of Alexander III’s belongings. As a memento of his elder brother Nikolai who died at a tragically young age, there is little doubt the present work would have been among the most sentimentally loaded pieces in the collection.