a rare pair of sèvres biscuit porcelain busts of tsar nicholas II and empress alexandra feodorovna, circa 1897

These busts were commissioned from the Sèvres Porcelain Manufactory after the visit of the Russian Emperor and Empress to Paris in 1896. On their way to Versailles the Imperial couple visited the famed porcelain manufactory at Sèvres accompanied by the French President Félix Faure, and were presented with many gifts including busts of Catherine the Great and Tsars Paul and Alexander I. According to the French press at the time, "Parisian society was gripped by admiration...few indeed were the Frenchmen who did not give way to real enthusiasm for the Emperor and for Russia over these days." See, Nicholas and Alexandra, Booth-Clibborn Editions, London, 1998, p. 107.
Leopold Bernard Bernstamm, born in Riga, studied at the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, and in the early 1880's achieved fame for a series of portrait busts of celebrated Russians in the fields of art, science and literature. In 1885 he settled in Paris and in 1896 was invited  to Tsarskoe Selo to make busts from life of he Russian Tsar Nicholas II and the Empress Alexandra Feodorovna.
Another such bust of Nicholas II is preserved in the collection of the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, but an extant pair of busts including the Empress Alexandra, as in this case, is unknown. It is likely that the pair were presented to Tsar Nicholas II by President Félix Faure when he visited St. Petersburg in 1897.