Ilya Nikolaevich Zankovsky, 1843-1917

Grand Duke Michael Michaelovich and Countess Torby, Villa Kazbeck, Cannes, France

Auction catalogue, Me. F. Gazagnaire, Vente Aux Encheres Publiques du Mobillier et des Objets d’Art garnissant la Villa Kazbeck, Ancienne Residence de la Comtese Torby et de S.A.I. Le Grand Duc Michel de Russie, Cannes, 7-12 May 1934, Lot 807 (Reproduced pl. 2, and further pl. 5 where a photograph shows the work in situ in the salon.)

The landscape artist Ilya Nicholaevich Zankovsky was born in 1832/33.  He studied at the Imperial Academy of Arts from 1862-63 and began exhibiting around 1880, and is recorded as having done so with the Society of Russian Watercolourists.  Primarily active in Tiflis he taught at the art school for the Caucasian Society for the Encouragement of the Fine Arts, circa 1880-1910.  There are a number of works by Zankovsky in the Russian Museum, St. Petersburg

The son of Grand Duke Michael Nicholaevich (1832-1909), (the younger brother of Alexander II), and Olga Feodorovna (1839-1891), (née Cecilie of Baden), Grand Duke Michael Michaelovich, known to the Imperial Family as ‘Miche-Miche’, was born at Peterhof in 1861.  In 1891 he met and secretly married Pushkin’s granddaughter, Sophie von Merenburg, (the daughter of Prince Nicholas Wilhelm von Nassau and Natalie Alexandrovna Pushkin.)  On hearing the news, the Grand Duke’s mother collapsed and later died of a heart attack.  Grand Duke Michael was stripped of his military rank, and when he failed to attend the funeral, Alexander III banished him from Russia.

They had three children Anastasia in 1892, (later Lady Zia Wernher, Marchioness of Milford Haven, Nadezhda in 1896, and Michael in 1898.  They were afforded their mother’s rank and adopted the courtesy title of Count and Countesses of Torby.

In 1899 the family moved to the Villa Kazbeck at Cannes where they were attended by a large staff including six chefs, made possible by the income earned from a factory bottling mineral water that G.D.Michael owned in Tiflis.  The Prince of Wales is said to have first met Mrs. Keppel at Villa Kazbeck.

During the First World War the couple to live in England and in reduced circumstances they were helped by King George V and Queen Mary who gave them £10,000, and were supported by their son-in-law, Harold Wernher who bought their famous collection of Fabergé, which is now housed as Luton Hoo.

Greatly affected by the Revolution and the murder of so many of his relatives, Grand Duke Michael became increasingly erratic in his behaviour, at one time chasing his daughter Nadia with a cigarette lighter.  On the 4^th September 1927, Countess Torby died at the age of 59.  Grand Duke Michael himself died two years later on the 26^th April 1929.  They are both buried in West Hampstead cemetery in London.