Mathilda-Marie Feliksovna Kschessinskaya (1872-1971)
Photograph signed. 1916
Photograph signed ('M. Kschessinskaya') and inscribed 'in kind memory to Vasili Ivanovich Frenkel'', n.p., 13 February 1916.

Image by an unknown photographer, 211 x 155mm, mount 293 x 226mm. Inscribed on Russian below image.

A signed photograph in the last days of her glory. From a noble Polish family, Kschessinskaya began dancing at the Mariinsky Theatre in 1890. It was at her debut performance that she met the future Tsar Nicholas II, then a Grand Duke, and they began a relationship which continued until his marriage in 1894; this was followed by liaisons with two other Romanov Grand Dukes, Sergei Mikhailovich and Andrei Vladimirovich. Although these relationships caused a scandal, her influence at the imperial court nevertheless gave her a prominent position at the Saint Petersburg Imperial Theatres, and she became one of the most famous ballerinas in this golden age of Russian ballet, famed for her technical mastery. By the time of the present photograph, she had amassed considerable wealth, but within a year the Bolsheviks had confiscated her house after the February Revolution, and in the wake of the October Revolution she moved to France, where in 1921 she married her erstwhile lover, Grand Duke Andrei Vladimirovich; in 1929 she founded a ballet school in Paris, at which she taught a number of distinguished future ballerinas.

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