Photographs of Tsar Nicholas II and family go on show at Science Museum in London

A sleigh ride in the snow, a hunting trip, a family outing on the lake dressed in cool white outfits with wide-brimmed hats: they look like the snaps of a carefree young family of the early 20th century, whose prosperous lives stretch out ahead of them.

In fact, these are intimate moments of the Romanov family who ruled Russia until the early 20th century, taken just a few years before their murder at the hands of the Bolsheviks.

Now on display for the first time, the photographs are part of a huge collection filling 22 albums that were captured by Herbert Galloway Stuart, an English tutor to the nephews of Tsar Nicholas II, between 1908 and 1916.

Their discovery was a shock, says Natalia Sidlina, a curator of the new Science Museum exhibition where the photographs take centre stage.

Sidlina said she unearthed the albums by chance when searching for Russia-related material held at the National Science and Media Museum in Bradford for the 2015 Cosmonauts exhibition.

Among the items brought up by the museum’s keepers was what appeared to be a wooden crate of champagne from Harrods. “When I opened the crate there were 22 albums – Romanov albums,” Sidlina told the Guardian.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A hunting trip with Nicholas II. Photograph: The Science Museum Group Collection

The exhibition, which dives into the life, health and bloody end of the imperial family, features some of the albums under glass alongside digitised images visitors can explore on screen.

“What amazed me was how alike those albums were to any other family albums we have … the Romanovs looked just like any middle-class family,” said Sidlina.

Appearances, however, are deceptive: troubles both personal and political were afoot. Among them, the family was grappling with the illness of the tsar and tsarina’s young son Alexei Nikolaevich, the family’s heir-apparent.

Weeks after his birth, the boy was found to be bleeding continuously from his navel and it soon dawned on his alarmed parents that he had haemophilia – a blood-clotting disease that had already proved fatal to several members of the Tsarina’s family.

Among the items behind glass are poignant reminders of the impact of the disease on the young boy’s life: a photograph of him having a mud bath, rolls of bandages and an empty wooden wheelchair – the same type used by Alexei after he experienced a severe haemorrhage following an accident in 1912.

But it is not only Alexei’s health that is under the microscope: the exhibition also touches on the mental health of his mother, for whom the pressure to produce a son took its toll. Among those she turned to were spiritual “healers” – including one Monsieur Philippe whose interventions only appear to have helped trigger a phantom pregnancy for the Tsarina.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Playing in the snow St Petersburg, c.1915. Photograph: The Science Museum Group Collection

And while the assassination of the Tsar and his family 100 years ago has long captivated the public, there too the exhibition aims to offer a fresh perspective. Curators have brought together items from Ipatiev House, where they were shot, including a stunning flower-shaped glass chandelier that hung in the room where the grand duchesses slept, as well as details of the ensuing Russian investigation and printouts of the forensic analysis led by British expert Dr Peter Gill on bones that were exhumed from a mass grave in 1991.

The investigation, carried out in 1993, was aided by a blood sample given by the Duke of Edinburgh, a relative of the tsarina, which showed through analysis of mitochondrial DNA, which is inherited through the maternal line, that the remains indeed included those of the imperial family.

Gill admits the work was challenging, not least when it came to taking care of the remains, which, he says, were brought to the UK by the Russian scientist Pavel Ivanov in a plastic bag and stashed overnight in Gill’s attic before being taken to the forensic laboratory.

“We had to think about security and that was the best I could do at the time,” he told the Guardian.

Russia agrees to further testing over 'remains of Romanov children' Read more

Sidlina said she hoped the exhibition would reveal how science, medicine and technology were a key part of the Romanovs’ story, both in life and death.

“The family was very powerful, very rich, but also from the scientific point of view very advanced – they had an x-ray machine brought into the palace, the older daughters and the tsarina were trained as Red Cross nurses, and they had access to the latest in technology as far as medical treatment was concerned,” said Sidlina.

“This [exhibition] uncovers previously shadowy sides of the very complex story which still holds people’s attention 100 years after their passing.”

The Last Tsar: Blood and Revolution opens on 21 September at the Science Museum, London