Forgotten Women artists
Christina Robertson: A Scottish artist in Russia
By Elizaveta P Renné and Jane Anderson
[Editorial note: This article, the 6th in our series on Forgotten Women Artists, follows the extraordinary life and career of Christina Robertson (1796—1854), a highly successful 19th-century Scottish painter who became virtually forgotten in her homeland after she left to pursue her art career in Russia.
The article is co-authored by Dr Elizaveta P Renné and Jane Anderson. Elizaveta is Keeper of British and Scandinavian Paintings at the State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, and Head of the Painting and Sculpture Section of the Western European Department of that Museum. Jane is a distinguished novelist of historical fiction, including The Girl Who Fled the Picture (2023), and The Paintress, based on the life of Christina Robertson, published in July 2024.
In Part 1 of the article, Jane explains how a chance visit set off her interest in Christina, and describes that painter’s life and career in Britain. In Part 2, Elizaveta examines the painter’s extraordinary subsequent artistic career in Russia]
For readers' comments on this article see here
[Editorial note: This article, the 6th in our series on Forgotten Women Artists, follows the extraordinary life and career of Christina Robertson (1796—1854), a highly successful 19th-century Scottish painter who became virtually forgotten in her homeland after she left to pursue her art career in Russia.
The article is co-authored by Dr Elizaveta P Renné and Jane Anderson. Elizaveta is Keeper of British and Scandinavian Paintings at the State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, and Head of the Painting and Sculpture Section of the Western European Department of that Museum. Jane is a distinguished novelist of historical fiction, including The Girl Who Fled the Picture (2023), and The Paintress, based on the life of Christina Robertson, published in July 2024.
In Part 1 of the article, Jane explains how a chance visit set off her interest in Christina, and describes that painter’s life and career in Britain. In Part 2, Elizaveta examines the painter’s extraordinary subsequent artistic career in Russia]
For readers' comments on this article see here
PART 1: On the trail of a forgotten painter
Jane Anderson writes: My interest in Christina began when I was visiting St Petersburg’s State Hermitage Museum. Standing in front of five life-sized paintings of the family of Nicholas I, I was astonished to read that they were painted by a Christina Robertson who came from Kinghorn in Fife, which is near my hometown. How was it possible that I’d never heard of this painter?
I later discovered that almost no one in the UK had heard of her. There are very few works by her in public collections in the USA or United Kingdom. At present, only two are on public display in the UK, and both are early miniatures -- a self-portrait in the V&A (Fig 1) and a miniature of children in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery.
I later discovered that almost no one in the UK had heard of her. There are very few works by her in public collections in the USA or United Kingdom. At present, only two are on public display in the UK, and both are early miniatures -- a self-portrait in the V&A (Fig 1) and a miniature of children in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery.
Fig 1: Christina Robertson, Self-portrait (1822), watercolour, V&A Museum
A question of identity
I made it my mission to find out more about her, and discovered some odd discrepancies. She has always been reported as having been born as “Christina Saunders”, in Kinghorn, on 17 December 1796. However, I found her birth registration, which sets out that her parents were in fact a Margaret and John Robertson, and that she was actually born “Christian Robertson”, in Edinburgh on 13 December 1796. Thus, she had a different given name (“Christian” was a common name for girls at the time), a different surname, and a different date and place of birth, compared to the commonly accepted account.
I don’t know how or when this discrepancy arose, but it may possibly be related to the fact, uncovered by my research, that Christina’s mother Margaret was a sister of the noted portraitist George Sa(u)nders, who actually did live in Kinghorn. Perhaps she was brought up there too? Possibly, for Christina’s career purposes, it could have been considered advantageous to link her identity and reputation more closely to this uncle George, as he became her mentor in her early career [1].
In 1822, Christina married James (coincidentally also surnamed Robertson) in London. Her husband was himself an artist. In the 1823 birth registration for their daughter Agnes, his profession was described as cabinet maker, but in births of their subsequent children, as an artist. By the time their last child, Mary, was born in 1833, only Christina’s profession was mentioned. James did exhibit at the Royal Academy in 1825 but he seems not to have been a noteworthy painter. It appears Christina was the breadwinner for the family, very unusual in those days.
Career in the UK
In her early career, Christina chiefly painted miniatures, following the example of her uncle George who also began as a miniaturist. She was already taking commissions by the age of 22, as evidenced by her portrait of the young Drummond-Burrell girls, which was apparently executed in 1819 [2]. From that same portrait we can also surmise she was under her uncle’s tutelage, because she painted his portrait of the girls’ mother, Lady Clementina Drummond, on the wall behind them.
Christina’s emphasis on miniatures continued for some time, though she did have one large painting in her first exhibition. The fact that she had a baby almost every year from 1823 until 1833 could have been a good reason to keep her scale small, and it is true that she painted more large paintings once she stopped having babies. Of her eight children, only four survived infancy, a sadly common tragedy in those times, but dealing with such pain and grief must have imposed additional difficulties for someone needing to earn enough commissions to support their family.
Over the years, Christina developed into a highly successful and prolific society portraitist. It’s impossible to know how many paintings and miniatures she created, but she exhibited at the Royal Academy almost every year between 1823 and 1844, a total of 130 portraits. In 1829, her achievements were recognised when she was elected the first female (and therefore honorary) member of the Royal Scottish Academy.
The nature of her portraits
Christina painted commissioned portraits, which naturally ended up in stately homes, rather than galleries. She was a female painter who concentrated on women, and a trail of mothers, sisters, sisters-in-law and daughters can be traced through her sitters. While the vast majority of her portraits are lost, some of her paintings were engraved for inclusion in society magazines, including La Belle Assemblée and Heath's Book of Beauty, and the British Museum has some examples. Society ladies would have sought her out to be included.
Christina did paint flattering portraits, particularly of children, but she also painted with honesty. A portrait she painted of Lady Louisa Rolle which was reproduced in the La Belle Assemblée magazine certainly calls into doubt the lady’s dress sense, portraying her in an enormously flouncy dress and ostrich feather trimmed hat. However, when this portrait appeared in the Royal Academy exhibition in 1834, there was another portrait by Christina of the same lady which predicts her later fame and painting style. Lady Rolle’s enormous portrait is full length and shows her dressed in ermine on the threshold of Westminster Abbey, at the coronation of William IV in 1831. The Devon charity who now owns this portrait have it hanging in their Great Torrington Town Hall wedding venue. They have attributed it to Thomas Lawrence but he died in 1830. I’m certain this is Christina’s work because it is reflected in her later portraits where she painted ladies looking backwards over their shoulder, in particular a portrait of Empress Alexandra Fyodorovna dressed in red. Christina was growing into her own style of painting.
Christina starts travelling
In the mid-1830s, after the birth of her 8th child, Christina began travelling to France to broaden her career. (Perhaps, in an age where there was no birth control, this was not surprising.) There is evidence that she was in Tours in 1834, and she definitely had a prolonged stay in Paris starting in 1835, where she painted a number of notables including, as noted in Part 2, various members of St Petersburg society that were resident there. Finally, in 1839 she made a major move, leaving her husband and two sons at home and, apparently, taking her two daughters to Russia. It must have been a difficult and courageous decision for her -- a family of women travelling all the way to St Petersburg without their male relatives would have been extremely unusual. She was presumably encouraged to embark on this undertaking by the positive reactions from her Paris portraits of Russian nobility, and by the knowledge of the ready market for portraits in that country.
I made it my mission to find out more about her, and discovered some odd discrepancies. She has always been reported as having been born as “Christina Saunders”, in Kinghorn, on 17 December 1796. However, I found her birth registration, which sets out that her parents were in fact a Margaret and John Robertson, and that she was actually born “Christian Robertson”, in Edinburgh on 13 December 1796. Thus, she had a different given name (“Christian” was a common name for girls at the time), a different surname, and a different date and place of birth, compared to the commonly accepted account.
I don’t know how or when this discrepancy arose, but it may possibly be related to the fact, uncovered by my research, that Christina’s mother Margaret was a sister of the noted portraitist George Sa(u)nders, who actually did live in Kinghorn. Perhaps she was brought up there too? Possibly, for Christina’s career purposes, it could have been considered advantageous to link her identity and reputation more closely to this uncle George, as he became her mentor in her early career [1].
In 1822, Christina married James (coincidentally also surnamed Robertson) in London. Her husband was himself an artist. In the 1823 birth registration for their daughter Agnes, his profession was described as cabinet maker, but in births of their subsequent children, as an artist. By the time their last child, Mary, was born in 1833, only Christina’s profession was mentioned. James did exhibit at the Royal Academy in 1825 but he seems not to have been a noteworthy painter. It appears Christina was the breadwinner for the family, very unusual in those days.
Career in the UK
In her early career, Christina chiefly painted miniatures, following the example of her uncle George who also began as a miniaturist. She was already taking commissions by the age of 22, as evidenced by her portrait of the young Drummond-Burrell girls, which was apparently executed in 1819 [2]. From that same portrait we can also surmise she was under her uncle’s tutelage, because she painted his portrait of the girls’ mother, Lady Clementina Drummond, on the wall behind them.
Christina’s emphasis on miniatures continued for some time, though she did have one large painting in her first exhibition. The fact that she had a baby almost every year from 1823 until 1833 could have been a good reason to keep her scale small, and it is true that she painted more large paintings once she stopped having babies. Of her eight children, only four survived infancy, a sadly common tragedy in those times, but dealing with such pain and grief must have imposed additional difficulties for someone needing to earn enough commissions to support their family.
Over the years, Christina developed into a highly successful and prolific society portraitist. It’s impossible to know how many paintings and miniatures she created, but she exhibited at the Royal Academy almost every year between 1823 and 1844, a total of 130 portraits. In 1829, her achievements were recognised when she was elected the first female (and therefore honorary) member of the Royal Scottish Academy.
The nature of her portraits
Christina painted commissioned portraits, which naturally ended up in stately homes, rather than galleries. She was a female painter who concentrated on women, and a trail of mothers, sisters, sisters-in-law and daughters can be traced through her sitters. While the vast majority of her portraits are lost, some of her paintings were engraved for inclusion in society magazines, including La Belle Assemblée and Heath's Book of Beauty, and the British Museum has some examples. Society ladies would have sought her out to be included.
Christina did paint flattering portraits, particularly of children, but she also painted with honesty. A portrait she painted of Lady Louisa Rolle which was reproduced in the La Belle Assemblée magazine certainly calls into doubt the lady’s dress sense, portraying her in an enormously flouncy dress and ostrich feather trimmed hat. However, when this portrait appeared in the Royal Academy exhibition in 1834, there was another portrait by Christina of the same lady which predicts her later fame and painting style. Lady Rolle’s enormous portrait is full length and shows her dressed in ermine on the threshold of Westminster Abbey, at the coronation of William IV in 1831. The Devon charity who now owns this portrait have it hanging in their Great Torrington Town Hall wedding venue. They have attributed it to Thomas Lawrence but he died in 1830. I’m certain this is Christina’s work because it is reflected in her later portraits where she painted ladies looking backwards over their shoulder, in particular a portrait of Empress Alexandra Fyodorovna dressed in red. Christina was growing into her own style of painting.
Christina starts travelling
In the mid-1830s, after the birth of her 8th child, Christina began travelling to France to broaden her career. (Perhaps, in an age where there was no birth control, this was not surprising.) There is evidence that she was in Tours in 1834, and she definitely had a prolonged stay in Paris starting in 1835, where she painted a number of notables including, as noted in Part 2, various members of St Petersburg society that were resident there. Finally, in 1839 she made a major move, leaving her husband and two sons at home and, apparently, taking her two daughters to Russia. It must have been a difficult and courageous decision for her -- a family of women travelling all the way to St Petersburg without their male relatives would have been extremely unusual. She was presumably encouraged to embark on this undertaking by the positive reactions from her Paris portraits of Russian nobility, and by the knowledge of the ready market for portraits in that country.
PART 2: Christina in Russia
Elizaveta Renné writes: Christina Robertson never managed to obtain a commission from the British royal circle, but she was very well received at the court of Russia’s all-powerful and extremely wealthy Tsar Nicholas I. During his reign (1825-1855), Anglomania spread to encompass the wider circles of the society. Curiously, even the Crimean War of 1854 to 1856 did not destroy the Russian nobility’s love for the British style of living. Nicholas I himself was brought up, to the age of seven, by an English nanny. Perhaps it was she who instilled in him that respect for her native tongue, for her people and her country, which was later to be reinforced by his readings of the novels of Walter Scott and by his own personal impressions, gained during the then heir to the throne’s travels through England and Scotland in 1816. Those personal impressions were then developed by the prevailing fashion for the romantic mediaeval era, the exoticism of the Orient and the Crusades, a fashion which spread across the whole of Europe.
Christina had made her appearance in Russia in 1839 at the height of her popularity and talent, with two decades of intensive work and success in London behind her. Engravings after her works, which appeared in numerous illustrated lady’s journals and albums of the 1830s and 1840s, served to make her works more widely known at home but also abroad. Several volumes of Heath’s Book of Beauty, for instance, once belonged to Empress Alexandra Fyodorovna, wife of Nicholas I. She was received with enthusiasm in Russia thanks to her ability to match current fashionable trends. Her delicate, elegant incorporeal female images had the distinct mark of ephemeral, passing taste, just what was wanted at the Russian court.
Any one of those members of St Petersburg society who posed for the artist in Paris might have recommended her to the Russian court. The first of the three clients mentioned in Robertson’s Account Book in 1837 was the wife of Prince Ludwig Wittgenstein (son of a Fieldmarshal General of the Russian army), born Leonilla Baryatinskaya. During just the first two years of her stay in Russia, Christina Robertson produced at least six portraits of members of the extensive Baryatinsky family. There is a watercolor by Friedrich Willhelm Klose of 1841, showing the salon in the Wittgensteins’ Berlin house [3], where on the walls between the pilasters hang portraits of Leonilla’s sisters, Olga and Maria, easily recognizable from surviving replicas by Christina Robertson in Russian collections. Her clients wanted to have them not only in St Petersburg or Moscow, but in their country houses and also copied for the relatives.
The portrait of Maria Kochubey, née Baryatinskaya, shown by the artist at the Imperial Academy of Arts in St Petersburg in 1839, was one of the earliest of her works from her Russian period. Maria, a society beauty and beloved friend of the Emperor’s own daughter Olga, married Prince Mikhail Kochubey in 1841 and died in childbirth just two years later. This early tragic death of the popular girl led to the production of many repetitions and copies of the portrait of her by Christina Robertson, who had captured the young Princess in the prime of her beauty. The critic Pavel Kamensky, reviewing the exhibition of 1839 at the Imperial Academy of Arts in St Petersburg, breathless with delight, wrote that it was the best portrait of all those exhibited at the Academy:
“This might confidently be placed alongside Rembrandt, and it would lose little from such a dangerous comparison. What a bold, powerful brush! How all is simple, natural what superb colouring! And who would have thought? All this is the work of a weak woman’s hand! Or, more correctly, only a woman could paint this: a man would not be capable of so much feeling... It is immediately clear that Mrs Robertson is an Englishwoman [sic], that she was brought up in the traditions of sublime portrait painting, that she studied mastery of the brush in the land of Reynolds and Lawrence.” [4].
In this long panegyric we hear surprise at and admiration for the talent of a woman, respect for the English school of portrait painting and for England overall.
Maria’s sister Olga Baryatinskaya married Count Orlov-Davydov in 1832, and posed for the Scottish artist many times for full-scale paintings and watercolours. In one of these portraits she is shown with a large, antiquarian book: her husband, the Count, was a collector of manuscripts and old books. Between 1825 and 1829 he lived in Britain, graduating from Edinburgh University and making the acquaintance of Walter Scott, whom he visited at Abbotsford and with whom he corresponded. Returning to Russia, he introduced on his estates the English system of management, which did much to improve them. To the end of his days he was a passionate admirer of the English way of life. Probably, on his request Christina Robertson depicted him in 1839 next to a horse, just like Walter Scott’s son was painted by William Allan for a portrait over the fireplace in the Library at Abbotsford. This was the first life-size full-length portrait immediately after Christina’s arrival in Russia.
Effect of the Winter Palace fire
Christina Robertson’s art accorded well with the taste of the Russian aristocracy and the ruling imperial family. After the destructive fire which tore through the Winter Palace in 1837, the interiors of this main imperial residence were restored, taking into account new structural devices and eclectic fashion. In the Gothicising design of some rooms, one can see again the taste of Nicholas I and feel the shadow of Walter Scott. It was only natural that the Emperor would engage a Scottish artist such as Christina to paint state portraits of his wife and daughters for the newly decorated interiors. After being exhibited at the Academy of Arts in 1841, the portrait of the Empress (Fig 2) was placed in the Rotunda and remained there until the Revolution of 1917. It can be seen in a watercolour of 1862 by Eduard Hau (Fig 3).
Christina had made her appearance in Russia in 1839 at the height of her popularity and talent, with two decades of intensive work and success in London behind her. Engravings after her works, which appeared in numerous illustrated lady’s journals and albums of the 1830s and 1840s, served to make her works more widely known at home but also abroad. Several volumes of Heath’s Book of Beauty, for instance, once belonged to Empress Alexandra Fyodorovna, wife of Nicholas I. She was received with enthusiasm in Russia thanks to her ability to match current fashionable trends. Her delicate, elegant incorporeal female images had the distinct mark of ephemeral, passing taste, just what was wanted at the Russian court.
Any one of those members of St Petersburg society who posed for the artist in Paris might have recommended her to the Russian court. The first of the three clients mentioned in Robertson’s Account Book in 1837 was the wife of Prince Ludwig Wittgenstein (son of a Fieldmarshal General of the Russian army), born Leonilla Baryatinskaya. During just the first two years of her stay in Russia, Christina Robertson produced at least six portraits of members of the extensive Baryatinsky family. There is a watercolor by Friedrich Willhelm Klose of 1841, showing the salon in the Wittgensteins’ Berlin house [3], where on the walls between the pilasters hang portraits of Leonilla’s sisters, Olga and Maria, easily recognizable from surviving replicas by Christina Robertson in Russian collections. Her clients wanted to have them not only in St Petersburg or Moscow, but in their country houses and also copied for the relatives.
The portrait of Maria Kochubey, née Baryatinskaya, shown by the artist at the Imperial Academy of Arts in St Petersburg in 1839, was one of the earliest of her works from her Russian period. Maria, a society beauty and beloved friend of the Emperor’s own daughter Olga, married Prince Mikhail Kochubey in 1841 and died in childbirth just two years later. This early tragic death of the popular girl led to the production of many repetitions and copies of the portrait of her by Christina Robertson, who had captured the young Princess in the prime of her beauty. The critic Pavel Kamensky, reviewing the exhibition of 1839 at the Imperial Academy of Arts in St Petersburg, breathless with delight, wrote that it was the best portrait of all those exhibited at the Academy:
“This might confidently be placed alongside Rembrandt, and it would lose little from such a dangerous comparison. What a bold, powerful brush! How all is simple, natural what superb colouring! And who would have thought? All this is the work of a weak woman’s hand! Or, more correctly, only a woman could paint this: a man would not be capable of so much feeling... It is immediately clear that Mrs Robertson is an Englishwoman [sic], that she was brought up in the traditions of sublime portrait painting, that she studied mastery of the brush in the land of Reynolds and Lawrence.” [4].
In this long panegyric we hear surprise at and admiration for the talent of a woman, respect for the English school of portrait painting and for England overall.
Maria’s sister Olga Baryatinskaya married Count Orlov-Davydov in 1832, and posed for the Scottish artist many times for full-scale paintings and watercolours. In one of these portraits she is shown with a large, antiquarian book: her husband, the Count, was a collector of manuscripts and old books. Between 1825 and 1829 he lived in Britain, graduating from Edinburgh University and making the acquaintance of Walter Scott, whom he visited at Abbotsford and with whom he corresponded. Returning to Russia, he introduced on his estates the English system of management, which did much to improve them. To the end of his days he was a passionate admirer of the English way of life. Probably, on his request Christina Robertson depicted him in 1839 next to a horse, just like Walter Scott’s son was painted by William Allan for a portrait over the fireplace in the Library at Abbotsford. This was the first life-size full-length portrait immediately after Christina’s arrival in Russia.
Effect of the Winter Palace fire
Christina Robertson’s art accorded well with the taste of the Russian aristocracy and the ruling imperial family. After the destructive fire which tore through the Winter Palace in 1837, the interiors of this main imperial residence were restored, taking into account new structural devices and eclectic fashion. In the Gothicising design of some rooms, one can see again the taste of Nicholas I and feel the shadow of Walter Scott. It was only natural that the Emperor would engage a Scottish artist such as Christina to paint state portraits of his wife and daughters for the newly decorated interiors. After being exhibited at the Academy of Arts in 1841, the portrait of the Empress (Fig 2) was placed in the Rotunda and remained there until the Revolution of 1917. It can be seen in a watercolour of 1862 by Eduard Hau (Fig 3).
Fig 2: Christina Robertson. Empress Alexandra Fyodorovna, oil on canvas. 264 x 162. 1841. The State Hermitage Museum, inv. No GE 4443. Image used from www.hermitagemuseum.org, courtesy of The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, Russia
Fig 3: Eduard Hau. The Rotunda in the Winter Palace. Watercolour on card, 41.5 x 32.5 cm. 1862.The State Hermitage Museum, inv No OR 11828. Image used from www.hermitagemuseum.org, courtesy of The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, Russia
Portraits of Nicholas’ three daughters commissioned by the Tsar for the Dining Room of the Winter Palace, were also shown at the Academy in 1841. One contemporary, Count Mikhail Buturlin, noted:
“The fashionable British artist has painted in turn the whole of the imperial family full length and received for this one hundred thousand silver roubles. Of Empress Alexandra Fyodorovna, who was of course by then at least forty years old, the flattering brush of the British lady made a twenty-year-old beauty, but it was not possible for her to flatter the Grand Duchesses… there nature herself competed with the ideals of art..” [5].
Influence of Dutch painting
There is no doubt that Christina Robertson was primarily popular among women, whom she knew how to subtly flatter. She was especially good at small portraits inspired by the Dutch seventeenth-century genre scenes, which they allowed her to study and copy in the rooms of the vast Imperial museum. The portrait of the Tsar’s two younger daughters Olga and Alexandra, painted in oil on canvas and measuring just 36 x 29 cm, is reminiscent of the works of Jan Mieris and Gerard Terborch. The composition of the portrait, the careful working up of details, skilful depiction of textures in the lace and silk fabrics and the fine enamel-like detail of the faces reveal the artist’s excellent knowledge of Dutch prototypes and demonstrate her first calling as a miniaturist. Italian artist Cosroe Dusi (1808-59), who visited Robertson’s studio in the Hermitage in 1840 was much taken with this small work, which he described as a very beautiful picture (“molto un quadretto bellissimo dove sono dipinte le Granduchesse Olga ed Alessandra”) [6] (Fig 4).
“The fashionable British artist has painted in turn the whole of the imperial family full length and received for this one hundred thousand silver roubles. Of Empress Alexandra Fyodorovna, who was of course by then at least forty years old, the flattering brush of the British lady made a twenty-year-old beauty, but it was not possible for her to flatter the Grand Duchesses… there nature herself competed with the ideals of art..” [5].
Influence of Dutch painting
There is no doubt that Christina Robertson was primarily popular among women, whom she knew how to subtly flatter. She was especially good at small portraits inspired by the Dutch seventeenth-century genre scenes, which they allowed her to study and copy in the rooms of the vast Imperial museum. The portrait of the Tsar’s two younger daughters Olga and Alexandra, painted in oil on canvas and measuring just 36 x 29 cm, is reminiscent of the works of Jan Mieris and Gerard Terborch. The composition of the portrait, the careful working up of details, skilful depiction of textures in the lace and silk fabrics and the fine enamel-like detail of the faces reveal the artist’s excellent knowledge of Dutch prototypes and demonstrate her first calling as a miniaturist. Italian artist Cosroe Dusi (1808-59), who visited Robertson’s studio in the Hermitage in 1840 was much taken with this small work, which he described as a very beautiful picture (“molto un quadretto bellissimo dove sono dipinte le Granduchesse Olga ed Alessandra”) [6] (Fig 4).
Fig 4: Christina Robertson. Grand Duchesses Olga and Alexandra, daughters of Nicholas I, oil on canvas, 91,8 x 68,8 cm. Signed and dated: C. Robertson pinxit 1840. The State Hermitage Museum, inv No GE 9574. Image used from www.hermitagemuseum.org, courtesy of The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, Russia
Dusi also mentioned that he saw Christina’s daughter, who was copying a miniature portrait of the Empress after her mother’s work. This is the only evidence that the artist stayed in Russia with her children, at least with her daughters Agnes of eighteen and Mary of almost eight years old. From Christina’s Account Book we know that her elder daughter sometimes helped her mother to finish portraits, and that in 1843 she showed 15 of her own works at the Royal Academy exhibition (their whereabouts is unknown). Mary also studied with her mother and possibly assisted Christina, especially at her later years in St Petersburg. However, one can very rarely find watercolours and oil paintings signed by her in museums or at auctions [7].
Election to the Imperial Academy
It was in the Imperial museum that Christina met Nikolay Utkin (1780-1863), during her first stay in Russia, an excellent engraver and Professor of the Imperial Academy of Arts, Keeper of the Department of Prints at the Hermitage, who often acted as intermediary between his European colleagues and the Russian Academy. It was he who facilitated the election of Christina Robertson as Honorary Free Associate of the Imperial Academy in 1841, and it was him that she thanked most touchingly in her letter from London in December the same year for the warmth of her reception. She added: “Je suis arrivé à Londre en bon santé Grâce à Dieu …, mais le lendemain en descendant d’un equipage je me fait mal à pied… que je penser que je resterais boîteues pour toujours -- et j’étais si triste que je ne pourrais pas aller à mes bon amis de Pétersbourg” (“I came back to London in good health thanks God.. but the next day while getting off the carriage, I injured my foot… I thought I would remain lame forever – and I was so sad that I could not go to see my good friends in St Petersburg”) [8]. This unfortunate incident may perhaps explain why she did not return for so long to Russia, where her career was going very well.
Return to Russia: 1847-54
Christina had returned to her family home in London in 1841. She worked there until her second visit to Russia, from 1847 to 1854, where she became based in the centre of the city, not far from the Tsar’s palace, at a very fashionable address on Nevsky Prospect. The visit began just as successfully as the first. Nicholas I acquired her painting The Meeting of Amy Robsart and the Earl of Leicester for his wife. It had been exhibited at the British Institution in 1847, and had merited a magnificent review in The Art Union [9]. She precisely depicted an episode in the sixth chapter of Sir Walter Scott’s novel “Kenilworth” and showed that she could brilliantly work in the historical genre.
In 1849 Christina once more received a commission from the Emperor which boded well for the future: to paint full-length portraits of his two daughters-in-law, and to make copies of three of his daughters from her own earlier works for a newly designed gallery of the Romanov dynasty. For this work she was allocated room in the Hermitage, supplied with a daily breakfast, dummy figures were brought from the Imperial Porcelain Manufacture, and she was given two lots of engravings by Rigaud and Reynolds from the Cabinet d’Estampes “of which she has need for the painting of the portraits” [10]. But circumstances took an unexpected turn, because His Imperial Majesty was not satisfied with her work, “not finding resemblance” in the portraits and ordered their rejection [11]. As a result, Christina Robertson lost a substantial financial support.
Luckily, she was not to remain without clients, even if she did not receive the promised vast sum for the imperial portraits. We know of a number of works in oil and watercolour dated between 1849 and the early 1850s (Fig 5). From this time came a portrait of Grand Duchess Maria as caring and attentive mother, surrounded by her four children. She also produced many watercolour portraits of the inhabitants of the Winter Palace: the Tsarina, her daughter Olga, daughter-in-law, Maria Alexandrovna, wife of the heir to the throne, and their children. These beautiful watercolours on Bristol board of relatively large size, with rounded upper corners, were usually set in leather or velvet standing frames, and placed on desks or mantelpieces, or sometimes hung on walls.
Election to the Imperial Academy
It was in the Imperial museum that Christina met Nikolay Utkin (1780-1863), during her first stay in Russia, an excellent engraver and Professor of the Imperial Academy of Arts, Keeper of the Department of Prints at the Hermitage, who often acted as intermediary between his European colleagues and the Russian Academy. It was he who facilitated the election of Christina Robertson as Honorary Free Associate of the Imperial Academy in 1841, and it was him that she thanked most touchingly in her letter from London in December the same year for the warmth of her reception. She added: “Je suis arrivé à Londre en bon santé Grâce à Dieu …, mais le lendemain en descendant d’un equipage je me fait mal à pied… que je penser que je resterais boîteues pour toujours -- et j’étais si triste que je ne pourrais pas aller à mes bon amis de Pétersbourg” (“I came back to London in good health thanks God.. but the next day while getting off the carriage, I injured my foot… I thought I would remain lame forever – and I was so sad that I could not go to see my good friends in St Petersburg”) [8]. This unfortunate incident may perhaps explain why she did not return for so long to Russia, where her career was going very well.
Return to Russia: 1847-54
Christina had returned to her family home in London in 1841. She worked there until her second visit to Russia, from 1847 to 1854, where she became based in the centre of the city, not far from the Tsar’s palace, at a very fashionable address on Nevsky Prospect. The visit began just as successfully as the first. Nicholas I acquired her painting The Meeting of Amy Robsart and the Earl of Leicester for his wife. It had been exhibited at the British Institution in 1847, and had merited a magnificent review in The Art Union [9]. She precisely depicted an episode in the sixth chapter of Sir Walter Scott’s novel “Kenilworth” and showed that she could brilliantly work in the historical genre.
In 1849 Christina once more received a commission from the Emperor which boded well for the future: to paint full-length portraits of his two daughters-in-law, and to make copies of three of his daughters from her own earlier works for a newly designed gallery of the Romanov dynasty. For this work she was allocated room in the Hermitage, supplied with a daily breakfast, dummy figures were brought from the Imperial Porcelain Manufacture, and she was given two lots of engravings by Rigaud and Reynolds from the Cabinet d’Estampes “of which she has need for the painting of the portraits” [10]. But circumstances took an unexpected turn, because His Imperial Majesty was not satisfied with her work, “not finding resemblance” in the portraits and ordered their rejection [11]. As a result, Christina Robertson lost a substantial financial support.
Luckily, she was not to remain without clients, even if she did not receive the promised vast sum for the imperial portraits. We know of a number of works in oil and watercolour dated between 1849 and the early 1850s (Fig 5). From this time came a portrait of Grand Duchess Maria as caring and attentive mother, surrounded by her four children. She also produced many watercolour portraits of the inhabitants of the Winter Palace: the Tsarina, her daughter Olga, daughter-in-law, Maria Alexandrovna, wife of the heir to the throne, and their children. These beautiful watercolours on Bristol board of relatively large size, with rounded upper corners, were usually set in leather or velvet standing frames, and placed on desks or mantelpieces, or sometimes hung on walls.
Fig 5: Christina Robertson. Grand Duchess Maria, daughter of Nicholas I, watercolour on card, 34.2 x 26.4
cm. Signed and dated: Christina Robertson pinx 1851. The State Hermitage Museum, inv. No OR 18966
Image used from www.hermitagemuseum.org, courtesy of The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, Russia
The artist continued to work for Russia’s noble families, the cream of society, including the Yusupov, Shuvalov, Sheremetev, Bobrinsky and Stroganov. She tried to present society beauties in their best light. She pleased them, skilfully depicting their fashionable garments, luxurious gold bracelets and incredible pearls. In this, as well as other playful accessories, in the depiction of vases, candelabra and especially flowers, dogs, parrots she clearly manifested her talent. In 1850 she finished one of her best works, Children with a Parrot (Fig 6), which is marked by greater painterly freedom, remarkable delicacy of brushwork, brilliant colouring and charm of composition.
Fig 6: Christina Robertson. Children with a Parrot, oil on canvas. 112 x 104 cm. Signed and dated: C. Robertson
pinxit 1850. The State Hermitage Museum, inv. No GE 8330. Image used from www.hermitagemuseum.org, courtesy of The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, Russia
In 1848-49 Emile Franҫois Dessain (1808—1881), the French artist, who also lived and worked in St Petersburg, produced a pastel portrait of Christina Robertson (Fig 7). He provided it with an inscription: “Hommage à Mme Robertson” showing his respect for the Scottish colleague who gained her popularity in Edinburgh, London, Paris and St Petersburg and walked the path of a hardworking woman artist with dignity.
Fig 7: Emile Franҫois Dessain, Christina Robertson, pastel on card, 48 x 33 cm. Signed: E Dessain homage à Mme Robertson. 1848-1849. Private collection, St Petersburg.
Christina Robertson died in 1854 in St Petersburg. The circumstances of her last years are unknown, but judging from one of her letters to Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna of 9 December 1852, she was of poor health and wished to return to England to her family, which she had not seen for five years [12]. Regrettably, her desire did not come true. Her death corresponded with the outbreak of the Crimean War (1854-56), as if drawing a line under a whole era of active and friendly artistic contacts between Britain and Russia.
Conclusion
Jane and Elizaveta write: Christina Robertson was a person of considerable talent, and great enterprise, drive and ambition, as exemplified by her decision to seek success in St Petersburg, which took her away from her home country when her expertise was at its height.
If we accept that a chief factor in her being forgotten was her being a woman who mainly painted women and children, this should be a cause of celebration not exclusion. Women are missing from our collective history. Christina Robertson was an important witness and a trailblazer ahead of her time, and deserves to be remembered ■
© Elizaveta Renné and Jane Anderson. First published June 2024.
Elizaveta Renné would like to thank Dr Catherine Phillips for her assistance with translations.
This article may be cited as Elizaveta Renné and Jane Anderson, "Christina Robertson: A Scottish Artist in Russia", Journal of Art in Society (2024)
We welcome your comments on this article: see here. For other articles in this series, see Forgotten Women Artists
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Conclusion
Jane and Elizaveta write: Christina Robertson was a person of considerable talent, and great enterprise, drive and ambition, as exemplified by her decision to seek success in St Petersburg, which took her away from her home country when her expertise was at its height.
If we accept that a chief factor in her being forgotten was her being a woman who mainly painted women and children, this should be a cause of celebration not exclusion. Women are missing from our collective history. Christina Robertson was an important witness and a trailblazer ahead of her time, and deserves to be remembered ■
© Elizaveta Renné and Jane Anderson. First published June 2024.
Elizaveta Renné would like to thank Dr Catherine Phillips for her assistance with translations.
This article may be cited as Elizaveta Renné and Jane Anderson, "Christina Robertson: A Scottish Artist in Russia", Journal of Art in Society (2024)
We welcome your comments on this article: see here. For other articles in this series, see Forgotten Women Artists
Return to HOME
end notes
1. Historical fiction writers such as myself like to turn this kind of detail into something fascinating. Although my novel The Paintress is fiction, I built it around the facts I had, including her exhibition records and her children’s birthdates.
2. Stephen Lloyd, Portrait Miniatures from Scottish Private Collections, 2006
3. This watercolour is reproduced in Charlotte Gere, Nineteenth Century Interiors. An Album of Watercolours, ed. Joseph Focarino, 1992, p. 150
4. P. P. Kamensky: “Vystavka russkikh khudozhestvennykh proizvedeniy v Sankt-Peterburge i Rime 1839”
[Exhibition of Russian Works of Art in St Petersburg and Rome 1839], Biblioteka dlya chteniya [Readers' Library], vol. 37, 1839, section II, pp. 53-54
5 ‘Zapiski grafa M. D. Buturlina’ [Notes of Count M. D. Buturlin], Russkiy Arkhiv [Russian Archive], Moscow, 1901, book 3, p.451
6. MS diary of Cosroe Dusi in the possession of the artist’s family; cited from a typewritten copy in the Hermitage. It was translated into Russian and published as ‘Dnevnik chudozhnika Cosroe Dusi‘ (Cosroe Dusi. Diario). St Petersburg, 2014
7. Elizaveta Renné, ‘Yeshche odin portret Dessaina’ [One more portrait by Dessain], Nashe Nasledie [Our Heritage], No. 108, 2013, pp. 99-103 (102)
8. Russian State Archive of Literature and Art, Moscow, Fund 894, Opis' 1, delo 16
9. The Art Union, IX, 1847, p. 81
10. Hermitage Archive, Opis' 1, 1849, delo 14, 30, 49
11. Ibid
12. Russian State Historical Archive, Moscow, Fund 472, Opis' 17, delo 10, f. 48
© Elizaveta Renné and Jane Anderson
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2. Stephen Lloyd, Portrait Miniatures from Scottish Private Collections, 2006
3. This watercolour is reproduced in Charlotte Gere, Nineteenth Century Interiors. An Album of Watercolours, ed. Joseph Focarino, 1992, p. 150
4. P. P. Kamensky: “Vystavka russkikh khudozhestvennykh proizvedeniy v Sankt-Peterburge i Rime 1839”
[Exhibition of Russian Works of Art in St Petersburg and Rome 1839], Biblioteka dlya chteniya [Readers' Library], vol. 37, 1839, section II, pp. 53-54
5 ‘Zapiski grafa M. D. Buturlina’ [Notes of Count M. D. Buturlin], Russkiy Arkhiv [Russian Archive], Moscow, 1901, book 3, p.451
6. MS diary of Cosroe Dusi in the possession of the artist’s family; cited from a typewritten copy in the Hermitage. It was translated into Russian and published as ‘Dnevnik chudozhnika Cosroe Dusi‘ (Cosroe Dusi. Diario). St Petersburg, 2014
7. Elizaveta Renné, ‘Yeshche odin portret Dessaina’ [One more portrait by Dessain], Nashe Nasledie [Our Heritage], No. 108, 2013, pp. 99-103 (102)
8. Russian State Archive of Literature and Art, Moscow, Fund 894, Opis' 1, delo 16
9. The Art Union, IX, 1847, p. 81
10. Hermitage Archive, Opis' 1, 1849, delo 14, 30, 49
11. Ibid
12. Russian State Historical Archive, Moscow, Fund 472, Opis' 17, delo 10, f. 48
© Elizaveta Renné and Jane Anderson
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