Portrait of Rasputin's Murderer Soars
November 27 2024
Picture: Sotheby's
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
A pastel portrait of Prince Felix Yusupov, who is most famous for his hand in the murder of Grigori Rasputin, soared at Sotheby's London yesterday. The portrait was one of three by the Russian female artist Zinaida Evgenievna Serebriakova offered in the recent Fabergé, Imperial & Revolutionary Art sale in New Bond Street. Felix's realised £276,000 (inc. premiums) over its modest £40k - £60k estimate, and his wife Irina Romanova's (niece of Emperor Nicholas II) realised £204,000 over its £50k - £70k estimate.
______________
As it happens, Felix's life has become of great interest to me in recent years and I would heartily recommend his rather eccentric memoir entitled Lost Splendour to anyone who'd like a colourful account of what it was like to be a Prince in late Imperial Russia. Both his Romanov wife Irina and him managed to escape persecution from the Bolsheviks and eventually settled in between France and England for the remainder of their years. Plagued by debts and depressed jewellery prices (the easiest way Russian emigrees could raise funds in those days) Felix Yusupov eventually had to part with his family's prized Rembrandts (1) (2) to stay afloat, paintings which eventually made their way into the National Gallery of Art in Washington via. the dealer Joseph Wiedner (and eventually resulted in a very messy legal battle). I sometimes daydream of whether the changing attitudes to questions of restitution, evident in many western galleries and museums these days, will ever reconsider the ownership of these two pictures in the future.
