Background
He is the son of Russian diplomat Prince Peter Petrovich Troubetzkoy.
He is the son of Russian diplomat Prince Peter Petrovich Troubetzkoy.
He worked in Russia, America, England and Italy. He was a self-taught artist, although he learned sculpture from Giuseppe Grandi. He is associated with impressionism, due to his ability to grasp sketchy movements in his bronze works.
He was heavily influenced by the work of Auguste Rodin and Medardo Rosso.
He depicted the society of the Belle Époque. Few of his bronzes are still available in the market.
Quite famous is the 35 cm high portrait of Constance Stewart-Richardson called "The Dancer". The monument was opened in 1909 on the Nevsky Prospekt near the Moskovsky Vokzal terminal.
After the Russian revolution of 1917, the Soviet government removed the monument from the main street to the backyard of the Russian Museum in Saint St. Petersburg.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the monument to Tsar Alexander III was placed in front of the Marble Palace near the embankment of the Neva river. Troubetzkoy was a vegetarian. Alexandra Tolstoy, daughter of the great novelist Leo Tolstoy wrote in her father’s biography: "From time to time he posed – a tiring obligation – for painters and sculptors: for Repin, Pasternak who did a study of the family, Aronson, and Paolo Trubetskoy.
Trubetskoy, a Russian educated in Italy, did some splendid little statues of Tolstoy – one of him on horseback.
Father was very fond of him. A sweet and childlike person in addition to his great gifts, he read practically nothing, spoke little, all his life was wrapped up in sculpture.
As a convinced vegetarian he would not eat meat but cried: “Je ne mange pas de cadavre!” if anyone offered him some. In his studio in Saint St. Petersburg there was a whole zoo: a bear, a fox, a horse, and a vegetarian wolf.
Troubetzkoy once said “As I cannot kill, I cannot authorize others to kill.
Do you see? If you are buying from a butcher you are authorizing him to kill – to kill helpless, dumb creatures which neither you nor I could kill ourselves.”
Paris Expo 1900 (gran premio). In: Anime International Company
De Young Museum (bust of Michael de Young)
Biennale di Venezia 1922. (37 works). Galleria Nazionale (Rome)
WWAA 1938.