A Rare Russian Porcelain Pictorial Plate with Portrait of Tsesarevna & Grand Duchess Natalia Alexeievna After Voille. Impe...

Description

A Rare Russian Porcelain Pictorial Plate with Portrait of Tsesarevna & Grand Duchess Natalia Alexeievna After Voille
Imperial Porcelain Factory, Period of Catherine II (1762-1796), circa 1776
10-1/8 inches (25.7 cm)
PROVENANCE:
John Atzbach Antiques, Bellevue, Washington;
The Kathleen Durdin Collection of Russian Decorative Arts, Tampa, Florida.

ILLUSTRATED:
Exhibition Catalogue: The Tsar's Cabinet: Two Hundred Years of Russian Decorative Arts under the Romanovs International Arts and Artists, Washington, D.C.: 2011, p. 34, illus. 87.

EXHIBITED:
George R. Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art, Toronto, Canada, October 13, 2011 - January, 8, 2012;
The Sonoma County Museum, Sonoma, California, February 24, 2012 - May 27, 2012;
Museum of Arts and Sciences, Daytona Beach, Florida, June 23, 2012 - September 8, 2012;
Royal Alberta Museum, Edmonton, Canada, October 6, 2012 - January 2, 2013;
Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens, Jacksonville, Florida, January 26, 2013 - April 27, 2013;
Bowers Museum of Cultural Art, Santa Ana, California, June 15, 2013 - September 8, 2013;
North Carolina Museum of History, Raleigh, North Carolina, October 5, 2013 - March 5, 2014;
Museum of Russian Icons, Clinton, Massachusetts, March 29, 2014 - May 25, 2014;
Huntsville Museum of Art, Huntsville, Alabama, October 11, 2015 - January 3, 2016;
Reading Public Museum, Reading, Pennsylvania, January 22, 2016 - April 17, 2016;
Telfair Museums, Savannah, Georgia, September 30, 2016 - January 6, 2017.


This cabinet plate from the period of Catherine II "The Great" is of note not only for the quality of the painting, but for the rarity of its subject. The plate depicts the Tsesarevna and Grand Duchess Natalia Alexeievna (1755-1776), in a beautiful reduction of the portrait by Jean-Louis Voille painted between 1773-1775, now in the collection of the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg (Inv. GE-1276). Born Princess Wilhelmina Louisa of Hesse-Darmstadt, the princess was the first wife of the Tsesarevich Paul Petrovich, later Emperor Paul I. The couple married in 1773, but despite Paul's love for Natalia, she did not return his affection. Sadly, their only child was stillborn, and she died from subsequent infection on 15 April 1776. Unpleasant rumors surrounded both the marriage and the Grand Duchess' death, and memorial works like this one served to reenforce the message that the Grand Duchess Natalia was beloved and mourned, despite court innuendo to the contrary.

By the end of the same year, Paul had remarried Grand Duchess Maria Feodorovna, born Princess Sophie Dorothea of Wurttemberg. They had a happy marriage, resulting in nine children, including two Russian emperors.
Property from the Kathleen Durdin Collection

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