109 years ago, on 24 August 1916, the Tsar’s daughters were officially photographed for the last time.
The Tsarina wrote in her diary “Today, the girls were photographed all day by [Alexander] Funk, as they needed new photos to give to their committees.” The four Grand Duchesses organised the photoshoot to help raise money for their charitable committees during WWI, with the profits from the sale of photographs helping fund committee work.
Tatiana Nikolaevna’s committee was particularly famous throughout the country, helping refugees to reconnect with family members and loved ones who they had lost during upheaval. As Tatiana Nikolaevna’s committee was the most popular, it therefore sold more copies, and it is no coincidence that multiple photographs of her have been recovered in good quality.
As the photographs were sold directly and not as widely internationally produced postcards, there are very few photographs that have been recovered in high quality. It appears that a photograph of Maria Nikolaevna is missing completely, and possibly a photograph of Tatiana Nikolaevna with Anastasia Nikolaevna posing together, to match the paired up photograph of their sisters.
Maria Nikolaevna wrote in her diary “Funk photographed us”, whilst Olga Nikolaevna gave more details in a letter to her father, writing “We were photographed endlessly by Funk today and we were bored and didn’t go out.”
Sources below the cut
