Lot 140: Iwan Winberg (Russian, active 1830-1846) Tsar Nicholas I (1796-1855), wearing black coat piped in red with gold buttons and epaulettes, the breast stars of the Imperial Russian Orders of St. Andrew and St. Vladimir combined with the British Order of

Tsar Nicholas I (1796-1855), wearing black coat piped in red with gold buttons and epaulettes, the breast stars of the Imperial Russian Orders of St. Andrew and St. Vladimir combined with the British Order of the Garter, and various medals, including the badge of the Imperial Military Order of St. George.
Signed on the obverse Winberg, gilded wood frame.
Oval, 102mm (4in) high

As the third son of the unfortunate Paul I and his consort, Maria Feodorovna, Nicholas was never expected to rule. However, the death by typhus of his elder brother, Alexander I (see lot 137), and the subsequent abdication of his second brother, Constantine, brought about his accession in December 1825. Possessing considerable personal charms - one Englishwoman who saw him on a visit to London in 1816 predicted that he would become 'the handsomest man in Europe - Nicholas was devoted to his frail and elegant wife, Charlotte of Prussia, whom he addressed as 'Mouffy'. They had seven children together, one of whom, Alexander II, would succeed his father on the throne, only to be killed by an assassin's bomb in 1881.

Remembered chiefly as one of the most reactionary of all the tsars, Nicholas I's guiding principles of 'autocracy, Orthodoxy and nationality' were straight-forward - he refused, for example, to abolish serfdom, although he privately acknowledged the iniquities of such a backward system. For this, and for his perceived narrow-mindedness, he was scorned by the native intelligentsia rising to prominence in the second quarter of the nineteenth century. Be that as it may, and despite the emperor's own conservatism, the arts in Russia flourished during his reign, with Glinka, Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol and Turgenev all achieving fame in their respective fields. By the time of his death in 1855, Nicholas was much troubled by his army's losses in the Crimean War, which did so much to undermine that image of the strong Russian 'superpower' he had crafted during his lifetime.