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A rare, large-format photograph, in fine condition, showing Grand Prince Pavel Aleksandrovich (1860-1919) with his second (morganatic) wife Olga Valerianovna Palei (Paley), Countess von Hohenfelsen (born Karnovich,1865-1929), together with children and their governesses.

The boy sitting in the foreground is the couple’s first child, Prince Vladimir Pavlovich Palei (1896/97-1918), famously born while Olga was still married with General Erich Gerhard von Pistohlkors. He showed talents as a poet from an early age, before becoming a lieutenant of the Hussar Life Guards Regiment. Arrested by the Bolsheviks in the aftermath of the Revolution, he was killed in a mineshaft near Alapaevsk in 1918. In 1981 Prince Vladimir Paley was canonised by the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad as a New Martyr.

Behind him, on the table, sits his baby sister Princess Irina Pavlovna Palei (Countess von Hohenfelsen; 1903-90).

Provenance

Colonel Vladimir Vladimirovich Svechin (1871-1944). Graduated from the Imperial School of Law in 1893 and then served in the Preobrazhenskii Life Guards Regiment, becoming an aide-de-camp of Tsar Nicholas II. After 1917 Revolution, Svechin emigrated to France, Bordeaux first and then Paris. One of the founders and a member of the board of the Union for the Liberation and Revival of Russia (1921), he contributed significantly to the commemoration of the members Russian Imperial family. He became a figure of Russian emigration, editing a magazine and publishing books.