Portrait of Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna

Christina Robertson (1796-1854) is a Scottish portrait painter who worked at the court of Nicholas I.
Robertson first arrived in St. Petersburg in 1839. At first, she painted portraits of the nobility, in the spring of 1841 she was invited to the court to paint portraits of Nicholas I and his family. In the same year, a series of life-size portraits of Empress Alexandra Feodorovna and her daughters were exhibited at the Academy of Arts, and Robertson herself became an honorary free associate of the Academy (the second woman - a member of the Academy after Vigee-Lebrun). In January 1849 she was again invited to the Winter Palace to write portraits of the daughters-in-law of Nicholas I - Maria Alexandrovna and Alexandra Iosifovna. In February 1850, Robertson was informed that Nicholas I was "not satisfied" with the new portraits and ordered to correct what had already been written. In September 1851, the court ordered the curator of the Hermitage portraits F. A. Bruni to return all copies of Robertson without payment. At the end of her life, the artist was in poverty, due to lack of funds could not return to England. The death of Robertson during the Crimean War, when most of the British colony in St. Petersburg left Russia, went unnoticed. The artist was buried at the Volkovskoye cemetery.

The State Hermitage has thirteen works by Robertson.