Portrait of Empress Alexandra Feodorovna

In the Photo Gallery, this painting can be seen in the artists studio in photograph #37.

In 2016, we received an email inquiry from The Tretyakov Museum in Moscow asking if we were certain this was Elizabeth, sister of the Empress Alexandra or Alexandra herself.  They have the painting and were certain that it was Alexandra. After seeing our site however, they delved further and found that the necklace the woman is wearing in the portrait was one that Elizabeth's husband gave to her for their wedding. The question was now settled...this is a painting done by Victor Stember of the Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna.  A photo of this painting can be seen on Stember's wall of his studio in photo #37 as well as others that are in the possession of the family.  In the memoir book of Victor Stember, his daughter also delineates some of the portraits she remembers her father painting and she states that he painted one of Elizabeth 'in a pink dress' and another 'in a blue dress.'   

Below is the biography of her sister Elizabeth:

Elizabeth Feodorovna was a Princess of Hesse and by Rhine (1864-1918). She married Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich of Russia. She was the older sister of Alexandra, the last Czarina of Russia, as well as the granddaughter of Queen Victoria.  

Elisabeth became famous in Russian Society for her beauty and charitable works among the poor.  After the Socialist Revolutionary Party's combat Organization murdered her husband with a dynamite bomb in 1905, Elisabeth publicly forgive his murderer and campaigned without success for him to be pardoned.  She then departed the Imperial Court and became a nun, founding the Marfo-Marlinsky Convent dedicated to helping the downtrodden of Moscow.  In 1918 she was arrested and ultimately executed by the Bolsheviks.  In 1981 Elisabeth was canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church.