Portrait ca 1832 Rijksmuseum
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Free to use
Born in 1795 in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Her parents were Tsar Paul Ist and Tsarina Maria Feodorovna, and her grandmother was Catherine the Great.
Her father was assassinated when Anna was 6 and her brother succeeded him as Alexander Ist.
When Anna was 14, she received a marriage proposal from the French Emperor Napoleon. The Romanovs rejected his proposal twice.
There was also a plan to marry Anna to the French Prince Charles, but this fell through because Anna would have had to convert to Catholicism.
Her brother Alexander was a good friend of our Hereditary Prince Willem Frederik, son of King Willem Ist.
In 1813, he was engaged to the British Princess Charlotte, but she broke off the engagement.
This prompted Alexander to suggest his sister as a suitor for Willem. Willem arrived in St. Petersburg in 1815, where, after a meeting, he officially asked for Anna’s hand in marriage.
It was agreed that Anna would retain her Russian Orthodox faith, but any children would be raised Dutch Reformed.
The wedding took place with great pomp and circumstance on February 21st 1816, at the Tsar’s Winter Palace. At that time, Anna became Princess of Orange.
They stayed in Russia for six months, arriving in the Netherlands in August.
Anna had a hard time adjusting to the Netherlands; everything here was very different from Russia. She clung to her Russian customs.Anna had brought chests full of tableware, linen, jewellery, furniture, and so on from Russia as her trousseau.
The couple had five children. In 1824, Anna returned to her beloved Russia for a year, and later, in 1855, during this trip, Anna posed for the only photograph ever taken of Anna.
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Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication (“CCO 1.0 Dedication”) Free to use
When her husband became King of the Netherlands in 1840, she was allowed to call herself Queen Anna.
After her husband’s death in 1849, Anna became increasingly withdrawn. It turned out that her husband had left behind significant debts, forcing her to sell paintings, among other things.
The relationship with her eldest son and his wife was strained.
Anna died in The Hague in 1865, at the age of 70.After her death, most of the jewellery went to her daughter, but her will stipulated that a sapphire collection be returned to the family in the Netherlands. Her son, King Willem IIIrd, purchased more sapphires and commissioned a tiara and two bracelets for her for his wedding to Emma.
Some of her famous jewellery is still worn by the current royal family, for example, the sapphire tiara worn by Queen Máxima at her inauguration in 2013.
We recently added a porcelain cup and saucer with a portrait of Anna Paulowna to our collection. This is the first time in over 30 years of collecting that we’ve seen a House of Orange souvenir depicting her.
The portrait on the cup is based on a portrait by Jean Baptiste van der Hulst from around 1832, meaning this cup was made between 1832 and 1840, when she became queen.
We also have a similar cup and saucer with a portrait of her father-in-law, King William Ist. It’s possible that a service featuring portraits of all the members of the royal family was made at the time.
Photographs weren’t available at the time, so a technique called Bat printing or transfer printing was used.
An image was engraved on a copper plate, ink was applied to this engraving, which was then printed on thin paper. This paper was then transferred to a previously fired piece of porcelain, and then the glaze was applied. This technique was used from 1795 until the mid-1800s.
Anna Paulowna Princess of Orange cup 7 saucer
King Willem Ist her father in law
