Alexander polovtsoff

A graduate of the Literary Institute of Saint Petersburg and then of the Imperial School of Law, he served a short time as an officer in the Horse Regiment of the Imperial Guard. In 1890, he became a member of the board of directors of the private Stieglitz Academy, which still exists in Saint Petersburg (art school, museum and library, founded in 1876 by A. Stieglitz, banker and industrialist).

On April 24, 1890, he married one of the richest heiresses in Russia, Countess Sofia Vladimirovna Panina (1871-1957). In connection with the impending extinction of the Panin family, his father tried to ensure that his son could be called Count Panin, but the emperor, who was the father at the marriage, rejected this request. It soon became clear that Polovtsov, who had a reputation as a sophisticated aesthete, preferred the company of young men to his wife, especially his employee Mikhail Andreev. Sofya Polovtsova returned her maiden name and title, leaving her husband.

A civil servant at the Ministry of the Interior from 1892, he carried out various industrial and administrative missions, particularly in the Caucasus and Central Asia, where he made numerous acquisitions for the oriental collection of the Stieglitz Museum.

In 1898 he was assigned to the Asian department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Consul general in Bombay between 1906 and 1907. Then, while remaining assigned to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he devoted several years to the development of heavy industry in the Urals. He became a member of the Academy of Sciences in 1907.

At the start of the war, in 1914, he represented the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in several inter-allied conferences. A fine connoisseur of Russian art, he became director of the Stieglitz Academy in 1917, a member of the artistic commission of the Gatchina Palace and, in the early days of Soviet power, he collaborated with the commissioner for culture and public education A. Lunacharsky. In November 1917, he was appointed commissioner for artistic affairs at the Pavlovsk Palace. In 1918, he donated his personal art collection and possessions from his dacha on Kamenny Island to the Stieglitz Museum and left Russia. He crossed the border into Finland on foot, then went to France and soon settled in Paris, where he opened an antiques store for the. In the 1920s he published a book “The Treasures of Russia in the Hands of the Bolsheviks”.

He is buried with his second wife Sofia Alexandrovna née Kunitskaya who survived him by 25 years (1884-1970).