Putin awards cellist Rostropovich for ‘service to the fatherland’

INVERNESS, Calif. – If history hadn’t gotten in the way, Andrew Romanoff could have been the emperor of Russia.\nBut as things turned out, the mustachioed grandnephew of the ill-fated last czar spends his time painting whimsical, folk-art renderings of his unusual upbringing in a dethroned royal family onto “Shrinky Dinks,” the plastic children’s toy that shrinks in the oven.\nHis whimsical pieces, which chronicle daily life, are currently being shown at San Francisco’s Gallery 16. Along with his recent memoir, “The Boy Who Would Be Tsar: The Art of Prince Andrew Romanoff,” they tell the story of the 20th century’s great wars and political convulsions from the very intimate perspective of a child at the center of it all.\n“At certain moments I would be called on to play the game, be a prince,” said Romanoff, 84, recalling the family reunion in St. Petersburg in 1998, when the last czar of Russia, Nicholas II, and his family were reburied 80 years after their execution by Bolshevik revolutionaries. “But it’s always the people around me who get excited about it.”\nHis art addresses the public’s curiosity about his royal birth. But in the context of Romanoff’s life, this attention to his origins seems almost an afterthought, as he shunned notoriety most of his life.\n“The social pages – they collect royals,” said Inez Storer, his wife of 32 years and an artist herself. “He never really got involved.”\nArt covers the walls of their redwood-shingled house in Inverness, a tiny waterfront town on the edge of Point Reyes National Seashore. There is folk art, their own art, pieces by friends and by well-known artists, and family photos. The vibrant display makes it clear that Romanoff’s royal birth was only the first of many quirky twists in a full, eventful life.\nThe story begins a few years before Romanoff was born, with the Russian Revolution of 1917 – a turning point in the history of the world, and for the Romanoff family, which held the Russian throne since 1613. The Bolshevik triumph led to the murder of Nicholas II, his wife and children, and plunged Russia into decades of communist rule.\nNicholas’ first cousin, King George V of England, sent a ship to rescue Nicholas’ sister, the Grand Duchess Xenia – Andrew Romanoff’s grandmother – and settled her family in a 23-room cottage on the grounds of Windsor Castle.\nIt was into this world that Romanoff was born – the child of royalty, raised to call England’s Queen Mary his “Auntie” and taught to stand up straight like a prince, but keenly aware that his family’s grasp on this lifestyle was tenuous. It was a childhood of exceptional privilege, of manicured gardens, nannies and tutors.