Our Notes & References

Fine suite of 30 lithographs with original hand-colour, depicting the elite Russian Imperial Guard: complete and very rare. Absent from standard bibliographies such as Colas, Lipperheide and Cat. des Russica; we could trace only one incomplete copy at auction in recent decades and none in public institutions.

The work mostly depicts officers, often on horseback, of various regiments composing the Russian Imperial Guard, the elite corps of the Russian army, founded in 1683 by Peter the Great to replace the Streltsy, which had revolted twice during his adolescence.

The plates render finely the beauty and colourfulness of the costumes, including the Tsar himself, here Nicholas I. Ethnic minorities like the ‘Muslims of the Guard’ and Circassians are also prominently displayed, as are the various ranks of Cossacks and hussars.

Iosif Khristofovich Datsiaro (born Giuseppe Dazario; 1806-65) was an Italian printmaker who opened Russia’s first private publishing house of printed art and became rather successful, opening shops in Paris, St. Petersburg and Moscow. The latter, still operated by Giuseppe’s son Alexander after his death in 1865, was something of a fixture in the city. Leo Tolstoy mentions it in his 1855 memoire in an amusing anecdote, perhaps familiar to those of us who window-shop in expensive galleries: ‘hurrying to make my choice as quickly as possible, out of shame at the trouble to which I was putting the polite shopman, I took a female head painted in water-colours which stood in the window, and paid twenty rubles for it’ (Horbal).

Dazario’s lithographs (and later photographs) of city views were continuously re-printed and widely distributed throughout Europe; his series of military portraits are rarer, and we couldn’t find much information of Bastin, the artist who signed these attractive plates.

Apparently published without title page, the work is sometimes titled ‘La Garde impériale russe’. It is worth noting that it includes an officer of the Crimean Cossacks, a short-living regiment created in 1832 and dissolved in 1863. This copy shows an elaborate title in fine manuscript, and is rather luxuriously presented, with thick card paper and deluxe binding.

Bibliography

Horbal, Bogdan. ‘The 19th Century Hand Colored Photographs of Moscow by J. Daziaro’. The New York Public Library.; Lugt, Frits. ‘Daziaro, Giuseppe’. Les Marques de Collections de Dessins & d’Estampes.