A JEWELLED GOLD AND ENAMEL COMMEMORATIVE CIGARETTE CASE, FRENCH, EARLY 20TH CENTURY

Elton John Collection, Sotheby's, London, 6 September 1988, lot 324

Grand Duke Dimitri Pavlovich (18 September 1891 – 5 March 1942) was the son of Grand Duke Paul Alexandrovich (1860-1919), eighth and youngest child of Tsar Alexander II of Russia, and his first wife, Princess Alexandra of Greece and Denmark (30 August 1870 – 24 September 1891). When the later died a few days after Grand Duke Dimitri’s birth, he and his sister, Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna (18 April 1890 – 13 December 1958) were brought up by their austere, disciplinarian uncle, Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, who was assassinated in 1905. Thereafter the handsome and charming Grand Duke Dimitri was adopted by the family of Emperor Nicholas II, with whom he was a great favourite. This, however, did not prevent him from becoming involved in the gruesome assassination of the charismatic, Grigori Rasputin (1869-1916), the self-proclaimed holy man so beloved by the Empress Alexandra. As a consequence, Dimitri was banished to the Persian front and thus escaped the worse excesses of the Russian Revolution. When he was in Paris in the 1920s his sister introduced him to the celebrated French fashion couturier, Coco Chanel with whom it was widely believed he had an affair. In 1926 he married the American heiress, Audrey Emery (1904-1971). The couple had a son before divorcing in 1937. The Grand Duke died at Davos, Switzerland of tuberculosis at the age of 50.