hi,
Due to the small post about Mon Repos in Re: Noble or imperial estate through czarist russia topic, I decided to start a small topic about Mon Repos to clear some mystery about it:
http://forum.alexanderpalace.org/index.php/topic,8718.0.htmlThis is the last thing I've found on Mon repos...*
I can not precise some more on his history trhough revolutionary wave and what is the real shape of all of it now(according to my readings it has been lost but nothing more is said...)so it is a mistery,if some could unveil the "secret",it would be great...it would also prove that some care for my writing and give not only time to read but also exchange informations...
Thanks,vASSILI
Monrepos is near Viborg in Carelia, former Finland and now Russia.
On the website of the national museum of Finland you can find some information about the house:
http://www.nba.fi/en/nmf_temporaryexhibitions_archIn early December 2005, the National Museum of Finland bought from the Hagelstam auction house in Helsinki seventeen oil paintings originally belonging to Monrepos Manor near Viipuri (Vyborg) in present-day Russia. This collection contains two landscape paintings, two Russian imperial portraits, and thirteen family portraits.
One of the landscapes is a view of Monrepos painted by the German artist Johann Jacob Mettenleiter in 1796 showing the manor house and the grounds before alterations that were begun in 1798.
Mettenleiter’s view of the manor is one the few oil paintings of Finnish landscapes of the 18th century, even despite the fact that the region known as Old Finland, ceded to Russia in the 18th century and containing Viipuri, was not restored to the rest of Finland until 1812, by which time Monrepos and its park had largely achieved its final layout and form.
The paintings purchased by the National Museum of Finland represent a central, though small part of the originally large art collection of Monrepos. The family portraits are important with regard to cultural history, for they include not only Ludwig Heinrich von Nicolay, the founder of the manor and its famous park, but also his son Paul Nicolaij and the latter’s son and future owner of the manor Nicolas Nicolaij as a child.
Monrepos Manor was established in the mid-1750s, when P. A. Stupishin, commandant of Viipuri Castle and later governor of so-called Old Finland, ceded by Sweden to Russia in the 18th century, owned a property known as Lill-Ladugård at this location. The estate was bought from Stupishin’s heirs in 1784 by Prince Friedrich Wilhelm of Württenberg, brother-in-law of Emperor Paul I of Russia. The prince, however, had to leave St Petersburg because of a divorce scandal and the manor, now named Monrepos, was sold in 1788 to Ludvig Heinrich von Nicolay, the prince’s acquaintance and librarian to Paul I.
After Ludvig Heinrich von Nicolay, the manor remained within the same family until 1942, when it passed into the ownership of Count Nicolas von der Pahlen, nephew of Marie Nicolaij, the last member of the original family of owners. Count von der Pahlen owned Monrepos until 1944.
On an old map of Viborg you can find a plan of the park and house:
http://www.around.spb.ru/maps/suomi/wiipuri.gif