Bogdan Khanenko

Bohdan Khanenko. 1912.

Bohdan Khanenko (Ukrainian: Богдан Іванович Ханенко; 1848, Surazhsky Uyezd – 1917, Kiev) was a Ukrainian lawyer, sugar industrialist, and art collector. He belonged to the well known Khanenko family, which included such personalities as Mykhailo Khanenko and Danylo Khanenko. Along with his wife Varvara, Bohdan Khanenko was known for his philanthropic activities towards art and its preservation in Ukraine and the Russian Empire.

Biography

The Khanenko family, which includes such personalities like Mykhailo Khanenko and Danylo Khanenko, was of Cossack origin. On his mother's side, he belonged to the Russian-German von Nilus family. 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 Kyiv, 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 Bohdan Khanenko was elected to the State Council of Imperial Russia.

Varvara Khanenko was evicted from their own house by the Soviets and had to live, for the last months of her life, in the house of their maidservant Dunyasha.

References

• The Bogdan and Varvara Khanenko Arts Museum at the Museum World of Ukraine: in Russian. in Ukrainian
• Prokopenko, The gift of Khanenko, Zerkalo Nedeli (The Mirror Weekly), February 4–10, 1995. (in Russian)