Olga (centre front) with her father, Alexander III, 1888. Back row (left to right), her siblings and mother: Grand Duke Michael, Empress Marie, Grand Duke Nicholas (later Nicholas II), Grand Duchess Xenia and Grand Duke George.
Front row from left: Olga, King Chulalongkorn of Siam, Dowager Empress Marie, Tsar Nicholas II and Crown Prince Vajiravudh during the king's visit to Russia in 1897
Russian imperial family, 1914. Left to right: Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna, Grand Duchess Maria, Tsar Nicholas II, Tsarina Alexandra, Grand Duchess Anastasia, Tsarevitch Alexei, Grand Duchess Tatiana
25 Chapters of My Life: The Memoirs of Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna
(The Grand Duchess Olga wrote her memoirs as a personal ac...)
The Grand Duchess Olga wrote her memoirs as a personal account of the final years of Imperial Russia... The youngest daughter of Alexander III and sister of Nicholas II, Olga was brought up in a happy and loving environment, where the wealth and majesty of the Russian court seemed forever assured. With an artist's eye for detail, she records her life against the background of the historical events, which shook the world. Her marriage to Prince Peter of Oldenburg failed, and she saw at first hand the horror and suffering while nursing in a field hospital during The Great War. At the onset of the Revolution in 1917, Olga and her new husband Nicholas Kulikovsky moved first to The Crimea and in early 1919 to the Caucasus, which was under White Russian control. When the Red Army moved in, Nicholas and Olga, with their two children, managed to escape to Denmark, and her mother's home. After the end of WWII the family emigrated to Canada to avoid the dangers posed by Soviet occupation of Dani.
Olga Alexandrovna Romanova was the youngest child of Emperor Alexander III of Russia and younger sister of Emperor Nicholas II. She studied art under the guidance of court painter M. Zichy and S.Yu. Zhukovsky. She wrote compositions of genre and everyday life, portraits of peasants, children, landscapes, still life. Her works have been reproduced on more than 100 postcards. Throughout her life engaged in charitable activities.
Background
Olga Alexandrovna was born on 13 June 1882 in the Peterhof Palace, west of central Saint Petersburg. Her birth was announced by a traditional 101-gun salute from the ramparts of the Peter and Paul Fortress, and similar salutes throughout the Russian Empire. Her mother, advised by her sister, Alexandra, Princess of Wales, placed Olga in the care of an English nanny, Elizabeth Franklin.
Education
The Grand Duchess and her siblings were taught at home by private tutors. Subjects included history, geography, Russian, English, and French, as well as drawing and dancing. Physical activities such as equestrianism were taught at an early age, and the children became expert riders.
Empress Marie was reserved and formal with Olga as a child, and their relationship remained a difficult one. But Olga, her father, and the youngest of her brothers, Michael, had a close relationship. Together, the three frequently went on hikes in the Gatchina forests, where the Tsar taught Olga and Michael woodsmanship.
Family holidays were taken in the summer at Peterhof, and with Olga's grandparents in Denmark. However, in 1894, Olga's father became increasingly ill, and the annual trip to Denmark was cancelled. On 13 November 1894, he died at the age of 49. The emotional impact on Olga, aged 12, was traumatic.
Career
On 1 August 1914, with World War I looming, Olga's regiment, the Akhtyrsky Hussars, appeared at an Imperial Review before her and the Tsar at Krasnoe Selo. With the Grand Duchess's prior medical knowledge from the village of Olgino, she started work as a nurse at an under-staffed Red Cross hospital in Rovno, near to where her own regiment was stationed. During the war, she came under heavy Austrian fire while attending the regiment at the front. Nurses rarely worked so close to the frontline and consequently she was awarded the Order of St. George by General Mannerheim, who later became President of Finland.
In 1916, Tsar Nicholas II annulled the marriage between Duke Peter Alexandrovich and the Grand Duchess, allowing her to marry Colonel Kulikovsky. The service was performed on 16 November 1916 in the Kievo-Vasilievskaya Church on Triokhsviatitelskaya (Three Saints Street) in Kiev. The only guests were the Dowager Empress, Olga's brother-in-law Grand Duke Alexander, four officers of the Akhtyrsky Regiment, and two of Olga's fellow nurses from the hospital in Kiev.
After Tsar Nicholas II abdicated in early 1917, many members of the Romanov dynasty, including Nicholas and his immediate family, were detained under house arrest. They lived at Alexander's estate, Ay-Todor, about 12 miles (19 km) from Yalta, where they were placed under house arrest by the local forces. On 12 August 1917, her first child and son, Tikhon Nikolaevich was born during their virtual imprisonment.
In February 1918, most of the imperial family at Ay-Todor was moved to another estate at Djulber, where Grand Dukes Nicholas and Peter were already under house arrest. Olga and her husband were left at Ay-Todor. The entire Romanov family in Crimea was condemned to death by the Yalta revolutionary council, but the executions were delayed by political rivalry between the Yalta and Sevastopol Soviets. By March 1918, the Central Power of Germany had advanced on Crimea, and the revolutionary guards were replaced by German ones. In November 1918, the German forces were informed that their nation had lost the war, and they evacuated homewards. Allied forces took over the Crimean ports, in support of the loyalist White Army, which allowed the surviving members of the Romanov family time to escape abroad. Olga escaped revolutionary Russia with her second husband and their two sons in February 1920. They joined her mother, the Dowager Empress, in Denmark. In exile, Olga acted as companion and secretary to her mother. After the Dowager Empress's death in 1928, Olga and her husband purchased a dairy farm in Ballerup, near Copenhagen. She led a simple life: raising her two sons, working on the farm and painting. During her lifetime, she painted over 2,000 works of art, which provided extra income for both her family and the charitable causes she supported.
In 1948, feeling threatened by Joseph Stalin's regime, Olga and her immediate family relocated to a farm in Ontario, Canada. With advancing age, Olga and her husband moved to a bungalow near Cooksville, Ontario. Colonel Kulikovsky died there in 1958. Two years later, as her health deteriorated, Olga moved with friends to a small apartment in East Toronto. She died aged 78, seven months after her older sister, Xenia. At the end of her life and afterwards, Olga was widely labelled the last Grand Duchess of Imperial Russia.
Achievements
The Russian Relief Programme, which was founded by Tikhon and his third wife Olga in honour of the Grand Duchess, exhibited a selection of her work at the residence of the Russian ambassador in Washington in 2001, in Moscow in 2002, in Ekaterinburg in 2004, in Saint Petersburg and Moscow in 2005, in Tyumen and Surgut in 2006, at the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow and Saint Michael's Castle in Saint Petersburg in 2007, and at the Vladimir Arsenyev Museum in Vladivostok in 2013.
Pieces by Olga are included in the collections of the British queen Elizabeth II and her husband Philip, the Norwegian king Harald V, and private collections in North America and Europe. Ballerup Museum in Pederstrup, Denmark, has around 100 of her works.
(The Grand Duchess Olga wrote her memoirs as a personal ac...)
painting
Imperial Russian Christmas
painting
Portrait of Tikhon Kulikovsky
painting
painting
Village Church in Autumn
1920
painting
Xenia drinking tea
Tea table with blue painted porcelain and a Russian samovar
painting
Her husband Nikolai Alexandrovich Kulikovsky and their eldest son, Tikhon
painting
painting
Portrait of Princess Vyazemskaya
1930
Birds in the snow
1920
Portrait of a gentleman,
painting
painting
painting
painting
painting
A forest glade at winter time
painting
Religion
The family was deeply religious. While Christmas and Easter were times of celebration and extravagance, Lent was strictly observed-meat, dairy products and any form of entertainment were avoided.
Views
Quotations:
"For in much wisdom is much grief, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow."
"Give my love to all who remember me."
"I am a Russian, and I will remain a Russian!"
"The best of all my friends and playmates was, however, "Nana", Mrs. Francklin. She came to us when I was three weeks old, and she didn’t leave me till 1913 when she closed her dear eyes in our house. She was nanny, teacher and friend all in one. She was the dearest and most loyal person I have ever met."
"The Russian Revolution took almost everything from me but the Bolsheviks left me with one privilage - to be a private person."
"My father was everything to me. Immersed in work as he was, he always spared that daily half-hour. ... once my father showed me a very old album full of most exciting pen and ink sketches of an imaginary city called Mopsopolis, inhabited by Mopses [pug dogs]. He showed it to me in secret, and I was thrilled to have him share his own childhood secrets with me."
Personality
Olga began drawing and painting at a young age. She painted throughout her life, on paper, canvas and ceramic, and her output is estimated at over 2,000 pieces. Her usual subject was scenery and landscape, but she also painted portraits and still lifes.
Her paintings were a profitable source of income. Olga preferred to exhibit in Denmark to avoid the commercialism of the North American market.
Quotes from others about the person
Her official biographer Ian Vorres wrote: "Her paintings, vivid and sensitive, are immersed in the subdued light of her beloved Russia. Besides her numerous landscapes and flower pictures that reveal her inherent love for nature, she often also dwells on scenes from simple daily life ... executed with a sensitive eye for composition, expression and detail. Her work exudes peace, serenity and a spirit of love that mirror her own character, in total contrast to the suffering she experienced through most of her life."
Her daughter-in-law wrote: "Being a deeply religious person, the Grand Duchess perceived the beauty of nature as being divinely inspired creation. Prayer and attending church provided her with the strength not only to overcome the new difficulties befallen her, but also to continue with her drawing. These feelings of gratefulness to God pervaded not only the icons created by the Grand Duchess, but also her portraits and still life paintings."
Interests
painting
Connections
By 1900, Olga, age 18, was being escorted to the theatre and opera by a distant cousin, Duke Peter Alexandrovich of Oldenburg, a member of the Russian branch of the House of Oldenburg. He was 14 years her senior and known for his passion for literature and gambling. Peter asked for Olga's hand in marriage the following year. At the age of 19, on 9 August 1901, Olga married 33-year-old Peter. Their marriage remained unconsummated. They settled into a 200-room palace. Olga and Peter had separate bedrooms at opposite ends of the building, and the Grand Duchess had her own art studio. Unhappy in her marriage, she fell into bouts of depression that caused her to lose her hair, forcing her to wear a wig. It took two years for her hair to regrow.
In April 1903, she was introduced to a Blue Cuirassier Guards officer Nikolai Kulikovsky by her brother Michael during a royal military review at Pavlovsk Palace. Olga and Kulikovsky began to see each other, and exchanged letters regularly. The same year, at the age of 22, she confronted her husband and asked for a divorce, which he refused with the qualification that he might reconsider after seven years. The relationship between Kulikovsky and the Grand Duchess was not public, but gossip about their romance spread through society.
The couple led separate lives and their marriage was eventually annulled by the Emperor in October 1916. The following month Olga married cavalry officer Nikolai Kulikovsky.
Maria Feodorovna (26 November 1847 - 13 October 1928), known before her marriage as Princess Dagmar of Denmark, was a Danish princess and Empress of Russia as spouse of Emperor Alexander III (reigned 1881-1894).
The Last Grand Duchess: Her Imperial Highness Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna
When she died in exile in 1960, Olga Alexandrovna was the last Grand Duchess of Russia, the favorite sister of Czar Nicholas II who was executed with his wife and five children during the Revolution. Born in splendor difficult to imagine today, she endured a lifetime of relentless tragedy with courage and exceptional powers of adjustment.
Olga Romanov: Russia's Last Grand Duchess
Olga Romanov lived a life full of romance and danger. Born into the doomed Romanov family in the late 19th century, she barely escaped the Bolshevik Revolution with her life. Never before seen letters and diary entries from Russian archives and family members cast new light on her daring escape across the Crimea, and reveal details of her miserable first marriage and subsequent love affair with the handsome officer who would become her second husband. A true tale of riches to rags, Olga lived on the proceeds of a spectacular cache of Faberge jewels smuggled out of Russia, eventually dying in relative poverty above a hair salon in a run down neighborhood of Toronto. With photographs from surviving descendents and quotes from Olga's own letters, this book brings one of the most illustrious and well-loved figures of Russia's grand imperial court to life.
Road to Emmaus No. 11: A Journal of Orthodox Faith and Culture
I To Be and Not to Seem: My Mother-in-Law, Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna An interview with Olga Nikolaievna Kulikovsky-Romanoff In the first of a two-part interview, Olga Nikolaievna, daughter-in-law of Russian Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna Romanoff and niece (by marriage) of Tsar Nicholas II, speaks of her own tumultuous early life, and the fascinating but unknown story of her mother-in-law, “The Last Grand Duchess.” II 1919: A Refugee Chri