A personal photograph album compiled by h.i.h. the late grand duke michael alexandrovich and his morganatic wife, countess brassova

The cover stamped (in Russian) XIII Winter Spring 1912 / Lisino Brassovo / Petersburg Gatchina. the album supplied by V. Chekato, Moscow



Containing two hundred and forty-two photographs, including images of the following:



Interiors of the residence in St.Petersburg with rococo plasterwork, landscapes with forests under snow, comfortable armchairs, a bearskin, masses of photographs, and Repin’s portrait of the Grand Duke (a study for the huge canvas The Sitting of the State Council painted for the Mariinsky Palace in St. Petersburg), one interior showing Countess Brassova’s daughter (Tatiana) by her previous marriage in the nursery;



A series of views on 22^{nd January at Lisino}



The village church;



Walks in the snow;



A meal dominated by a colossal stuffed bison and moose;



Bear hunts on the 1^{st and 2nd February;}



Lunch on 3^{rd February with Sergei Rachmaninov among the guests;}



The Grand Duke and his wife, their heads together, pose for the camera beside an embroidered screen;



Rachmaninov with the trophies of the bear hunt;



Rachmaninov on skis;



To Brassovo on 4^{th February;}



18^{th March, arriving at the clapboard house in Gatchina; (the house, screened by Soviet tenements, still stands. It was here that Michael was arrested for the second time by Urisky and sent to Siberia, where he perished.)}



The couple together on a sofa in the Moscow house on 24^{th March;}



Country house pursuits at Lisino hunting lodge, 26^{th March;}



30^{th April: the journey from Lisino to St.Petersburg and Gatchina;}



30^{th May: the halt of two motor cars between St.Petersburg and Gatchina;}



Among the deer in the park at Gatchina;



6^{th May: on the steps of Gatchina Palace;}



7^{th May: the couple’s infant son George, born fifteen months before the marriage of his parents, standing in his cot (he died in a motor accident near Auxerre in France in 1931);}



15^{th May: Moscow, Michael photographs his own reflection in a wardrobe mirror}