Bogdan Khanenko


Bogdan Khanenko was a Kiev-born lawyer, sugar industrialist, and art collector. He is a member of a well known Ukrainian Khanenko family which includes such personalities like Mykhailo Khanenko and Danylo Khanenko. Along with his wife Varvara, Bogdan Khanenko is known for his philanthropic activities towards art and its preservation.

Biography

In 1871 Khanenko graduated from the law department of Moscow University and served as a judge in St Petersburg and Warsaw. By the end of 1880 he retired and settled in Kiev, marrying Varvara Tereshchenko, daughter of sugar industrialist Nikolai Tereshchenko.
Khanenko was a famous patron of the arts, and during his forty-year collection activity he purchased works from art auctions in Vienna, Berlin, Paris, and Madrid. His most valuable purchases resulted from his trips to Italy where he obtained approximately 100 pieces through auctions in Rome and Florence, and with the assistance of Alexander Rizzoni, a Russian-born painter living in Rome. He built a Museum of Western and Oriental Art with his unique and private foreign art collection. After his death, the museum opened up to the public and was named after the couple.
In 1906 Bogdan Khanenko was elected to the State Council of Imperial Russia.
Varvara Khanenko was evicted from his own house by the Soviets and had to live, for the last months of her life, in the house of his maidservant Dunyasha.