Thanks to Zinaida Serebriakova(née Lanceray), born in Ukraine a Ukrainian and Russian painter of French roots from the Benois family (a family of prominent 19th and 20th Century Russian artists, musicians, and architects, descended from French confectioner Louis Jules Benois, who came to Russia in 1794 after the French Revolution). Zinaida Serebriakova was born on the estate of Neskuchnoye near Kharkov (now Kharkiv, Ukraine) into one of Russia's most refined and artistic families. She belonged to the artistic Benois family. Her grandfather, Nicholas Benois, was a famous architect, chairman of the Society of Architects and member of the Russian Academy of Science.Her great-grandfather was the Venetian-born Russian composer Catterino Cavos. Her uncle, Alexandre Benois, was a famous painter, founder of the Mir iskusstva art group. Her father, Yevgeny Nikolayevich Lanceray, was a well-known sculptor, and her mother, who was Alexandre Benois' sister, was good at drawing. One of Zinaida's brothers, Nikolay Yevgenyevich Lanceray, was a talented architect, and her other brother, Yevgeny Yevgenyevich Lanceray, had an important place in Russian and Soviet art as a master of monumental painting and graphic art. The Russian-English actor and writer Peter Ustinov was also related to her. In 1900 she graduated from a women's gymnasium (equivalent to grammar school or high school), and entered the art school founded by Princess M. K. Tenisheva. She studied under Repin in 1901, and under portrait artist Braz between 1903 and 1905. Between 1902--1903 she spent time in Italy, and from 1905--1906 she studied at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris.In 1905, Zinaida Lanceray married her first cousin, Boris Serebriakov, the son of Evgenyi's sister, and took his surname. Serebriakov went on to become a railroad engineer. She joined the Mir iskusstva movement in 1911.When in 1916 Alexander Benois was commissioned to decorate the Kazan Railway Station in Moscow, he invited Yevgeny Lanceray, Boris Kustodiev, Mstislav Dobuzhinsky, and Zinaida Serebriakova to help him. Serebriakova took on the theme of the Orient: India, Japan, Turkey, and Siam are represented allegorically in the form of beautiful women. At the same time she began compositions on subjects from classical mythology, but these remained unfinished. At the outbreak of the October Revolution in 1917, Serebriakova was at her family estate of Neskuchnoye, and suddenly her whole life changed. In 1919 her husband Boris died of typhus contracted in Bolshevik jails. She was left without any income, responsible for her four children and her sick mother. She did not want to switch to the futurist style popular in the art of the early Soviet period, nor paint portraits of commissars, but she found some work at the Kharkov Archaeological Museum, where she made pencil drawings of the exhibits. In December 1920 she moved to her grandfather's apartment in Petrograd. After the October Revolution, inhabitants of private apartments were forced to share them with additional inhabitants, but Serebriakova was lucky - she was quartered with artists from the Moscow Art Theatre. Thus, Serebriakova's work during this period focuses on theatre life. In the autumn of 1924, Serebriakova went to Paris, having received a commission for a large decorative mural. On finishing this work, she intended to return to the Soviet Union, where her mother and the four children remained. However, she was not able to return, and although she was able to bring her younger children, Alexandre and Catherine, to Paris in 1926 and 1928 respectively, she could not do the same for her two older children, Evgenyi and Tatiana, and did not see them again for many years.In 1928 and 1930 she traveled to Africa, visiting Morocco.In 1947, Serebriakova at last took French citizenship, and it was not until Khruschev's Thaw that the Soviet Government allowed her to resume contact with her family in the Soviet Union. In 1960, after 36 years of forced separation, her older daughter, Tatiana (Tata), was finally allowed to visit her. Zinaida Serebriakova died in Paris on September 19, 1967, at the age of 82. She is buried in Paris, at the Russian cemetery at Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois. She had her biographer - S. Ernst. _http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zinaida_Serebriakova___________________ Halyna Myroslava "Oh, Princess" Галина Мирослава "Ой, княгине" http://fairytale-ua.ucoz.ru/blog/zbirka_quot_zijdi_do_mene_misjacju_zijdi_quot_1990_i/2010-05-30-8 Збірка "Зійди до мене, місяцю, зійди", вірш 39

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