The 24th of August 1999 saw the opening of the exhibition ‘The Golden Age of Flemish Painting’ in the Pushkin Museum in Moscow. The exhibition was dedicated to the memory of Xenia Sergeevna Egorova, the main author of the event, who died on the 11th of July 1999 in a tragic train accident.
She belonged for long years to the staff of the Pushkin Museum, where she was the curator of the Department of Flemish Art. She was an extremely talented and learned person. She had a perfect command of several languages, giving her access to current art-historical literature. She was interested in theoretical problems concerning art history as well as the process of painting and the minutiae of art-historical research. Her wide knowledge and talent as a writer made her books and articles a pleasure to read. Her ability to distinguish historical lines and the specific place of an artist within that development was always based on careful analysis of her material. The fields to which she devoted most attention were early Dutch and Flemish art, as in her monograph ‘Jan van Eijck’ (1965), and to 17th-century Dutch and Flemish art, such as ‘The Portrait in the Works of Rembrandt’ (1975).
Xenia Egorova also contributed an article and comments to ‘Pieter Paul Rubens, Letters, Documents, Opinions of Contemporaries’ (1977). She worked for years on ‘Landscape in Dutch Art of the the XVth Century’, a study that became her dissertation. This book was being prepared for publication when she died, together with her contribution to the Codart Twee congress of 14 and 15 March 1999.
With her great experience and in close co-operation with restorers, Xenia re-attributed dozens of paintings, especially of the Early Dutch and Flemish schools. Her study of the collection of the Pushkin Museum resulted in the publication of the scholarly catalogue ‘Early Dutch, Flemish and Belgian paintings’ which Xenia considered to be her most important achievement. (A list of her publications follows below.)
Xenia also contributed to the work of the Pushkin Museum through organizing exhibitions – ‘Moscow-Berlin’ for example – and lecturing. Her interests were not limited to her profession. She loved Russian and West-European literature and music as well as nature, her dacha outside Moscow and travelling abroad. She could tell wonderful stories about ‘old’ Moscow. As the last member of a traditional Moscow family she was familiar to pre-revolutionary life and brought through that many a painting to life. Xenia was a sparkling personality. In her we lose a highly skilled scholar and a warmharted and charming friend. In 1998 the undersigned celebrated with her the day of St. Nicholas (Sinterklaas) in Museum De Lakenhal in Leiden. Xenia enjoyed the party and sang for the saint the songs she was familiar with through her studies. We miss her very much.
Xenia’s friends and colleagues finished the work on the exhibition she planned and prepared on the ‘The Golden Age of Flemish Painting’.
Foundation for Cultural Inventory
Lia Gorter,
Marijcke van Dongen,
Bernard Vermet
Publication
The Netherlands, XV-XVI centuries; Flanders, XVII-XVII centuries; Belgium, XIX-XX centuries: collection of paintings
Xenia Egorova
Collection catalogue, gave occasion to exhibition Flemish paintings in the Pushkin Museum held in 1999 in Moscow (Pushkin Museum)
416 pp., 26 x 22 cm., hardbound, in Russian
Moscow (Pushkin Museum) 1998
ISBN 5-89480-010-2