A UNIQUE engagement photograph of Czarevich Nicholas (later Czar Nicholas II) and Princess Alix of Hesse, German photographer Professor E. Uhlenhuth.

4 1/4 x 6 1/2 in. (10,8 x 16,7 cm)

The photograph is inscribed in black ink by Czarevich Nicholas:

On the engagement day 8 Apr.

Provenance: Queen Olga of Greece

Czarevich Nicholas arrived to Coburg (Germany) as a head of the delegation of the House of Romanovs, for the wedding of Alix’s brother. The arrival of Czarevich and his possible engagement were in the center of attention, overshadowing the wedding itself. The wedding was attended by major European royalty, like Queen Victoria of England and German Emperor Wilhelm II. Although Alix fell in love with the Czarevich in 1889 when she visited Russia, she strongly resisted conversion to the Russian Orthodoxy, what was mandatory for all non-Russian subjects who were to marry into the Romanov family. On the forth day of Nicholas’s arrival, Alix finally agreed, and the engagement took place in the afternoon of April 8th (1894).

The photograph was sent by Czarevich Nicholas to Queen Olga of Greece, who was Russian Grand Duchess Olga Konstantinovna by birth, born in 1851 in the Pavlovsk Palace of Grand Duke Konstantin, married George I of Greece in 1867, died in 1926.