The Monument to Emperor Alexander III: An important bronze equestrian portrait, after the model by Prince Paul Troubetzkoy (1866-1938), cast by Valsuani Foundry, 1909

dark brown patina, inscribed and dated 'Paul Troubetzkoy 1909', with impressed foundry mark

The Collection of the Artist, by whom given or bequeathed to his first-cousin-once-removed, Prince Youka Nikolaivich Troubetzkoy (1905-1992), in 1938

Thence by descent

Property of Susan Troubetzkoy, sold, Sotheby's New York, 18 October 2001, lot 13, where purchased by the current owner

Rome, Prima Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte Della Secessione, 1913, no. 450

Excellent condition. Could do with a professional clean.
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The worldwide competition to choose an artist to sculpt the monument to Emperor Alexander III was announced on 25 November 1899, shortly after the fifth anniversary of his death.  Prince Paul Troubetzkoy, then living and teaching in Moscow, decided to enter and first conceived a model showing the Emperor in full regalia seated on his throne.  When this failed to impress the judges, most notably Emperor Nicholas II, as well as Prince Golitsyn, who served as head of the commission overseeing the project, the deadline was extended, at which point the artist changed his mind and settled on an equestrian portrait.  It was this model which, after some adaptation, was finally approved in its final form by the Emperor in 1906. 

To complete the ambitious project, Troubetzkoy was given complete freedom, and the necessary resources were made available to him.  A specially designed studio, large enough to handle the scale of the work, was built near the eastern end of Nevsky Prospect in St Petersburg.  Members of the Imperial commission visited only once, when they met the sculptor’s pets, a dog, a wolf and a bear, all tame but perhaps intimidating enough to impede a second visit.  Money for the project was forthcoming.  The final cost was in excess of a million roubles, the budget overrun covered by the Ministry of Finance through cuts to railway expenditures.  Master caster Emilio Speratti was recruited from Italy for his expertise in large-scale cire perdue (lost wax) casting, the method of production on which Troubetzkoy insisted. 

Following an intense eighteen months of casting and construction, the monument was placed on its pedestal in Znamenskaya Square, and the ceremonial unveiling occurred on 23 May 1909 in the presence of members of the Imperial Family.  The monument, outside the traditional heroic style, was not universally well-received, and some critics thought it too impressionistic.  The late Emperor’s widow, Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna, however, felt that her husband had been faithfully and majestically represented; she was touched that he sat atop his favourite Percheron horse, Lord.  The monument served as the inspiration for the Fabergé Imperial Egg which she would receive from her son the following year, with a tiny model of the monument in gold as the ‘surprise’ in a rock crystal egg.  In gratitude, Troubetzkoy was awarded the Order of St Vladimir, Fourth Class, by the Emperor.  The Dowager Empress gave him a jewelled gold box with portraits of herself and Alexander III which, at a cost of 5,000 roubles, was among the most expensive awarded (U. Tillander-Godenhielm, The Russian Imperial Award System, 1894-1917, Helsinki, 2005, pp. 175, 507).  In 1910, he won a further competition to sculpt the proposed monument to Emperor Alexander II, a project which was abandoned, largely owing to the cost of the previous work; his model for that monument sold, Christie’s London, 24 November 2014, lot 422.    

Predictably, during and following the Revolution, the monument to Alexander III became an object of derision.  In 1919, the pedestal was inscribed ‘pugalo’ (scarecrow).  It was placed in a cage in 1927 as a symbol of the Imperial regime.  In 1937, it was disassembled and nearly melted down, saved by the efforts of the Russian Museum, which also protected it from destruction during the Second World War.  It was relocated in 1994 to the Marble Palace, a branch of the Russian Museum, where it remains today.

The present lot is one of a small number of casts made of Troubetzkoy’s model and the one he kept for himself.  It is one of a group of five sculptures which were left to his cousin Prince Youka at his death in 1938 and sold at Sotheby’s New York in 2001.  Another of the same size is in the Russian Museum, St Petersburg (illustrated, Catalogue of the Sculpture in the Collection of the Russian State Museum, Leningrad, 1988, no. 1353; for more information, see also L. Shaposhnikova, The Monument to Alexander III, St Petersburg, 1996; and J. Griono, ‘Prince Paul Troubetzkoy: The Making of a Monument to Alexander III’, Antique Collector Magazine, London, October 1989, p. 65).