Lot 6: ALEXEI PETROVICH BOGOLIUBOV

1824-1896 STEAMSHIP ON THE DON signed in Cyrillic l.r. and inscribed Don l.l.; further numbered 4/7 on the Imperial Collection label on the stretcher, numbered 26 on a label on the frame, and inscribed 26/760/753 on the stretcher and frame oil on canvas 28.5 by 46,5cm, 10 by 18 1/2 in.

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

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

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.