Alex-Ceslas Rzewuski

Alexander Rzewuski (9 March 1893 – 13 September 1983) (also known as Alex-Ceslas Rzewuski) was a Catholic clergyman of Polish-Russian aristocratic background, with a Russian Orthodox background. He was also a writer and illustrator.

Biography Alexander descended from a long line of Poles who had played a prominent part in the history of their country. At the last partition of Poland in 1795, they passed over to the service of the Russian Empire. Rzewuski's grandfather was in the personal suite of four Tsars, and his father, General Adam Rzewuski, born in Ukraine, was military Governor of the Caucasus region at the time of Alexander's birth there in 1893.

Alexander's mother Katarzyna Lubarski-Fluki was a Russian from the Saint Petersburg aristocracy. He was baptised into the Russian Orthodox Church and spent his childhood partly in the Caucasus (with forays into Azerbaijan and Chechnya) and partly in Ukraine, where a series of French and English governesses educated him and his sisters at home.

As an adolescent of 14, he was sent north, far from the mountains of the Caucasus, to school in Saint Petersburg at the Imperial Alexander Lycée. Schooling completed, he passed on to the university there. As an undergraduate, he was profoundly, if imperceptibly, affected by the philosophy lectures. A cast of mind which was to stay with him until his student days as a Dominican, was introduced.

Rzewuski served during the war as an officer in command of organising fleets of ambulances for the wounded.

October Revolution, artwork and conversion During the October Revolution, at a family council it was decided that Alexander and his relatives all should flee to the Italy, where they had members of their wider family. Three weeks later, after criss-crossing through Poland, Czechoslovakia and Austria, they were all ensconced in the Palazzo Caetani in Rome.

However, Alexander was starting his painting career and for this Paris promised greater opportunity than Rome. He moved there and worked as an artist between 1920 and 1926, winning a reputation as a portrait painter and illustrator;

His first assignment was to Albertinum

Confessions of a Dominican: From the parties of the roaring twenties to the silence of the cloister (1984)

La double tragédie de Misia Sert