Description:
A Pair of French Porcelain Souvenir Busts of Nicholas II and Alexandra. These busts were made in connection with the visit of the Imperial couple to France in 1896. Height 4", maker's mark stamped on back "Pt SEVRES R.L & Cie." The white busts are mounted on glazed cobalt stands with gilt rimming.

Material:
Bisque porcelain

Maker/Artist:
Sevres

Date:
c. 1896

Provenance:
FL estate

Size of Artwork:
4 x 2.5 x 1.5"

Weight (LBS)
.41

Condition:
Alexandra has had a clean break of her head at the neck and at the cobalt stand base, both joints re-glued. Nicholas is fine.

History:
In Paris on October 6, 1896, between four and five million people, including many from the provinces, started gathering at daybreak to see the new Russian emperor, Nicholas II, and Empress Alexandra. Russian and French flags festooned the city, bare tree branches were decorated with artificial leaves and flowers, and countless lanterns swayed and sparkled everywhere. Busts of Nicholas II outsold all others, even Napoleon’s. A series of ceremonies lasted several days and included dinners, meetings, speeches, theater performances, a 101 gun “imperial salute” by an artillery battery, and the Tsar’s review of 70,000 troops. Nicholas and Alexandra also laid the cornerstone of a new bridge across the Seine while forty maidens chanted in a flower-decorated boat nearby. Named after Nicholas’ father, Alexander III, this is probably the most photographed bridge in Paris today, if one judges by the number of fashion shoots that use it as a backdrop (and by the number of tourist photos—as in my case several days ago when I was in Paris: please see below). Despite the elation of the crowds and the efforts of the French officials to keep the ceremonies at a dignified fever pitch, dark shadows also crept in. People in the crowds could not forget the bitterness of the French loss to the Germans twenty-five years ago and the renewed threat of war that the alliance with Russia implied. Nicholas and Alexandra often seemed to be ill at ease or frightened. The couple was guarded very closely, which reminded observers that revolutionaries had not only killed the tsar’s grandfather, but were actively hunting him, members of his family, and other Russian notables. Other memories of tragic bloodshed were also fresh because Nicholas’ reign began just four months earlier with what many contemporaries saw as an ominous sign. Several days after his coronation, a mass celebration for the common folk of Moscow that had been planned on Khodynka Field on the city’s outskirts turned into a tragedy (some years later, Frederick would wind up living virtually across the street from the field). Rumors that there would not be enough food, drink, and gifts, such as commemorative enameled cups with the royal couple’s initials, caused the enormous mass of people to rush the stands, resulting in more than 1,300 being trampled to death and many others injured. That evening, Nicholas heeded bad advice, as he would often do later as well in far more perilous times, and did not cancel a diplomatic ball, thus earning a reputation for being distant, uncaring, and inept. With Russia so much in the news, it would have been difficult for anyone in Paris during early October 1896 to think of Russia in the way they had before, or not to think of Russia at all. Frederick would tie his fate to Russia’s only a few years later.