Lauded for his “immediate, instantaneous” style and his ability to create a convincing likeness, Prince Paul Troubetzkoy was a talented portrait sculptor and the quintessential “celebrity-artist.” Over the course of his long and productive career, he attracted an impressive roster of high-profile sitters from both sides of the Atlantic, among them Isadora Duncan, Anatole France, Auguste Rodin, Frankin Delano Roosevelt, George Bernard Shaw, and Leo Tolstoy.
Born in Intra, a small town near Lake Maggiore, Italy, Troubetzkoy (variously known as Paul, Paolo, and Pavel) was the second son of the Russian prince, Pierre Troubetzkoy, and his wife, Ada Winans, an American opera singer. Growing up in a cultured household frequented by artists and writers, his interest in art began as a young boy, when he began drawing and sculpting domestic animals.
Encouraged in his creative endeavors by the sculptor Giuseppe Grandi, Troubetzkoy decided to pursue a career as an artist. He began his formal training in Milan in 1884, studying with the sculptors Donato Barcaglia and Ernesto Bazzaro. During this period, he continued to depict animals, including a head of a horse, which he exhibited at the Palazzo di Brera in 1886. Troubetzkoy also turned his attention to portraiture, initially focusing on performers of the Milanese opera before going on to specialize in vigorous portraits of persons of distinction. His busts and statuettes of prominent people had a decidedly contemporary flavor. Conjoining his penchant for close observation with the aesthetic approaches of progressive-minded sculptors such as Rodin and Medardo Russo, Troubetzkoy developed his own brand of naturalism, favoring impressionistic surfaces that imbued his sculptures with life and animation.
In 1889, Troubetzkoy was awarded an Honorable Mention at the Exposition Universelle in Paris. Four years later, he won a gold medal in Rome for his bronze, Indian Scout. He also made his professional debut in the United States in 1893, exhibiting a selection of his small statuettes in the Italian section of the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. At the time, Troubetzkoy’s sculptures attracted little attention from American critics; however, he did set an important example for the young sculptor Bessie Potter Vonnoh (1872–1955), who saw his work and was profoundly inspired by his lively technique and his sitters’ modern attire and hair styles.
Towards the end of 1898, Troubetzkoy moved to Russia where––in addition to sculpting three portraits of Count Tolstoy and executing an equestrian statue of Tsar Alexander III––he spent two years as a professor of sculpture at the Moscow Academy of the Fine Arts. His dynamic style, with its emphasis on evoking a fleeting moment, caused a stir among Russian artists, bringing him approval from his forward-thinking peers and disdain from the academic establishment. Towards the end of 1905, Troubetzkoy became increasingly aware of the country’s growing political unrest. He subsequently left Russia and moved to Paris, establishing his home and studio at 23, rue Weber in the fashionable Sixteenth Arrondissement.
Troubetzkoy’s presence in France allowed him to broaden his client base to include affluent visitors from the United States, to the extent that in the autumn of 1910, a writer for the Washington Post reported: “The vogue of Troubetzkoy’s statuettes, especially among rich Americans, is said to be rapidly growing, and it is said that he demands for them extraordinary prices” (“Troubetzkdy [sic] Coming Here,” Washington Post, October 30, 1910, p. 10). His American time culminated in an exhibition at the Hispanic Society in February–March of 1911.
Although Troubetzkoy returned to Paris shortly thereafter, his profile in America continued to rise when he had one-man shows in Buffalo (1911); Chicago, St. Louis, and Toledo (1912); and Boston (1913), receiving ample coverage in both the art press and in the society pages of newspapers. He traveled back to Manhattan in early 1914 for his solo exhibition at Knoedler & Co. (During that year, his work also appeared in exhibitions in San Francisco, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles.) When war broke out in Europe, Troubetzkoy remained in New York, taking studio space at 24 West 59th Street, where he modeled portraits of wealthy women such as Mrs. J. Borden Harriman and Mrs. William Astor Chanler. Having won a commission to execute a monument to General Harrison Gray Otis in Los Angeles in 1919, Troubetzkoy established a studio there as well, attracting patronage from some of the foremost screen idols of the day, among them Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, Sr.
In 1921, Troubetzkoy went back to Paris, where he continued to sculpt portraits of the rich and famous and maintained his high standing in cosmopolitan art circles. The recipient of numerous awards and honors, Troubetzkoy spent his final years at his villa in Verbania, Italy, where he continued to sculpt figures and animals until his passing in 1938. (A devout animal lover, Troubetzkoy was a strict vegetarian. His renunciation of meat led to his death by anemia.)