Nicholas II in pictures

St. Petersburg, August 25, Interfax - The last days of the Romanovs exhibition of photos by Pierre Gilliar, the teacher of the children of the last Russian emperor, is set to open in the State Photography Center in St. Petersburg on Friday.

These photos are far from official portraits, they are valuable because they show the domestic life of the Tsar's family and are reminiscent of photos from a family album, museum curator Maria Guryeva said to Interfax.

The exhibition will present some 60 photographs printed from the early 20th century negatives. The public will see for the first time the tsar playing with his son and his daughters walking in woods. Some pictures show Nicholas II, already divested of power, working at a vegetable garden or chopping firewood or resting together with his children.

In the early 20th century, Pierre Jolliar, a Swiss, spent several years at the Russian court teaching the tsars children and stayed with them during their arrest. He was together with the Romanovs from March 1917 to July 1918 at the Tsars Village, in Tobolsk and Yekaterinburg. He managed to escape death and come back to his homeland never to return to Russia. In 1920, he published his memoirs.

According to Guryeva, Gilliars book of memoirs is a very good supplement to the pictures presented. The author sees and admires the joie de vivre the royal children showed even under arrest, she noted.

During the inauguration of the exhibition the Russian version Gilliars book entitled "Side by Side with to the Tsars Family" was presented. After its closure on September 20 in St. Petersburg the exhibition is planned to be taken on tour to the Russian cities of Kostroma, Novosibirsk, Arkhangelsk, Murmansk, Petrozavodsk, Yekaterinburg and Moscow.