Czar Nicholas II & Czarina Alexandra of the Russian Empire in a 1903 photo colorized by Alex Lim

The Czar and Czarina dressed as Czar Alexei I and Czarina Maria Miloslavskaya, taken in 1903 during a grand New Year's costume ball at St. Petersburg Winter's Palace with jewel-studded regallia that can buy am upscale house and lot in New York these days.

Czarina Alexandra and Czar Nicholas ca 1908

Colorized a rather faded and dark vintage photo of the last Romanoff couple to rule over Imperial Russia.  Other photos suggest this was taken on a ship voyage or cruise ship.

Colorized Romanoff Sisters, circa 1913-14 OTMA

Here is my colorized version of the Romanoff sisters from a group portrait taken right about the same time, later, or earlier than the complete family portrait here and here. They are, standing left to right, Grand Duchess Maria, Grand Duchess Anastasia,  & Grand Duchess Olga, and seated is the Grand Duchess Tatiana Nicholaevna. Some liberties are again at work here.  The photo hardly hints of the painting on the left background.  While I could have just cropped it out,  I didn't want to crop any part of their bodies and the balance would be off.  So I just composited and darkened the 1882 painting of a Russian artist Nicholai Bogdanov-Belsky (1868 - 1945) titled "Reading a Letter".  He was at the height of his creative career during the first 20 years of the 19th century.  No specific reason for choosing his work, other than the colors. 

The Romanoff Family circa 1913 -1914 (Alternate Pose & Colorization)

Taken with a different pose and arrangement as the first which was the more popular of the two and also preserved with better detailing than the other earlier family shots. This alternate shot with a different order does not have the flowing graceful composition of the first with poor little Alexei overwhelmed by the crowd.

I have taken more creative liberties in colorizing this. A little research done earlier tended to show that the Tzar's imperial uniforms had a two-tone color, as is most common among royal military uniforms in Europe such as the Scott's and Hussar's uniforms, usually the neck, cuffs and breast. The colorization here takes some liberties to create a more aggressive and diverse color palette than the first. This time around, I used pastels for the ladies. 

 

The Romanoff Family circa 1913 -1914

This colorized family portrait of Russian Czar Nicholas II takes creative liberties in the choice of colors on both background and the subjects. The B&W registration of light pastel colors often result in white but except for the Czarina Alexandra, I preferred using a common color scheme for the daughters based on the many official pictures where they appeared to wear uniform apparel. This photo shoot was taken sometime between 1913 and 1914 just 3-4 years away from their murders by the Bolshevics during the takeover by Lenin and his communist party. The entire family members have been canonized as Saints and Martyrs of the Russian Orthodox Church in November 1981, They are, left to right, seated: Grand Duchess Maria Nicholaevna; Czarina Alexandra Feodorovna; Czarevitch Alexei Nicholaevitch on the floor; Tsar Nicholas II; Grand Duchess Anastasia Nicholaevna Standing: Grand Duchess Tatiana & Grand Duchess Olga Nicholaevna. Downloaded from the U.S. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs All colors were guessed as there have been several colorization works on the same subject.