Olga was raised at the Gatchina Palace outside Saint Petersburg. Her relationship with her mother was strained and distant from childhood, Her mother, advised by her sister, Alexandra, Princess of Wales, placed Olga in the care of an English nanny, Elizabeth Franklin. Olga and her siblings were taught at home by private tutors. She studied art with art teachers K.V. Lemokha, V.E. Makovsky, S.Yu. Zhukovsky and S.A. Vinogradova. The Imperial Russian children had a large extended family and often visited the families of their British, Danish, and Greek cousins.
Tsar Alexander III died when Olga was 12, and her brother Nicholas became emperor. Olga’s elder brother Nicholas became Tsar Nicholas II of Russia. King George V of Britain and Tsar Nicholas II of Russia were first cousins. Their mothers, Alexandra and Dagmar, were sisters, which explains why George and Nicholas looked so much alike. They were the daughters of King Christian IX of Denmark and his wife Queen Louise, who was of German heritage. Princess Alexandra married Queen Victoria’s eldest son, Edward, who became King Edward VII and George was their son. Princess Dagmar married Tsar Alexander’s son, who became Tsar Alexander III and Nicholas was their son.
In 1901, she married Duke Peter Alexandrovich of Oldenburg. The couple led separate lives and their marriage was eventually annulled by the Emperor in October 1916. The following month, Olga married cavalry officer Nikolai Kulikovsky, with whom she had fallen in love several years before.
During the First World War, the Grand Duchess served as an army nurse at the Russian Front and was awarded a medal for personal gallantry. At her own expense, Olga opened the First Evgenyivsky Hospital, in which she worked as a nurse. Even at the Front, the Grand Duchess devoted her free time to her watercolours, often painting scenes in the hospital and portraits of officers.
At the downfall of the Romanovs during the Russian Revolution of 1917, Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna, Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich (Sandro), and Grand Duchess Olga traveled to the Crimea where they were joined by Olga’s sister (Sandro’s wife) Grand Duchess Xenia. They lived at Sandro’s estate, Ai-Todor, where they were placed under house arrest by the local Bolshevik forces. On August 12, 1917, Olga’s first child Tikhon Nikolaevich was born during their house arrest.
Olga’s brother, brother, Tsar Nicholas II and his family were shot by revolutionaries.
Olga escaped from Russia with her second husband and their two sons in February 1920. They joined Olga’s mother, the Dowager Empress, in Denmark. In exile, Olga acted as companion and secretary to her mother, and was often sought out by Romanov impostors who claimed to be her dead relatives. She met Anna Anderson, the best-known impostor, in Berlin in 1925. After the Dowager Empress's death in 1928, Olga and her husband purchased a dairy farm in Ballerup, near Copenhagen. She led a simple life - raising her two sons, working on the farm and painting. During her lifetime, she painted over 2,000 works of art, which provided extra income for both her family and the charitable causes she supported.
In 1948, the Soviet Union notified the Danish Government that Olga was accused of conspiracy against the Soviet Government. Feeling threatened by Joseph Stalin's regime, Olga emigrated with her immediate family to a farm in Ontario, Canada. Later Olga and her husband moved to a bungalow near Cooksville, Ontario. Colonel Kulikovsky died there in 1958. Two years later, as her health deteriorated, Olga moved with devoted friends to a small apartment in East Toronto. She died aged 78, seven months after her older sister, Xenia.
I am trying to find paintings done by Olga during her time at the Front in WW1, so that I can add hr to my list of Artists of the First World War.
Self portrait.
