Self-portrait "of a toilet" artists in the exhibition "World of Art" in 1910 was loud for a modest 25-year-old artist's success. "Self Serebrya undoubtedly the most joyful thing ... Here is the full spontaneity and simplicity: the true artistic temperament, something crisp, young, smiling, sunny and clear, something totally art ... "- wrote Alexander Benois. But even he, "Uncle Alex" is not anticipated that the pictures will be acquired by a niece of the Tretyakov Gallery. Zinaida Serebryakova becomes the spiritual center of the artistic dynasty Kavos - Lancere - Benoit, France, dating back to the XVIII century.

«I have decided to stay with children bored, but on the farm where the house was small and its could protopit winter is easier than large high room ... Boris A. My husband was on a business trip, the winter of that year came the earliest, it was all recorded snow - our garden, the fields around, everywhere drifts, can not go. But in a house on the farm is warm and cozy, and I started drawing myself in the mirror ...», - well remembered Zenaida Y. writing about the history of this self-portrait.

In 1911 Zinaida Serebryakova written Self-portrait "Girl with a candle." From the picture looks, half-turned, happy, loving girl, almost a girl - a young, spontaneous, flickering, luminous soul of the artist itself.

During the 1917 revolution in Neskuchnii house burned - along with the library , the set of drawings and canvases. And in 1919 at the hands of Serebrya die of typhus Boris A.. One in four young children and elderly mother, Ekaterina Nikolaevna ... It seemed a solid house, the family home collapsed ... By this time there is the sad pictures of Serebryakova - "House of Cards": Sasha, Tanya, Kate, Jack, - four orphaned children - put their fragile would destroy in an instant a house of cards. But this family and this house ... "That house, the feeling of family warmth, the hearth - for Serebryakova were the most important pillars in the life and work.

In 1924" Uncle Alex " helping his niece to go to Paris, the children remain with her grandmother in St. Petersburg. After some time with the help of the Red Cross can smuggle across the border son Sasha and daughter Katya. Eugene and Tania were blinded by their grandmother in Russia.

And then - exhibitions in France, Belgium, England and the terrible agonizing ambivalence - raggedness family home. Up to 1940 remain Serebryakova Soviet citizen and was hoping to be reunited with children, remain in Russia. During Hitler's occupation of France had to choose between a French passport and a concentration camp. From Soviet citizenship had to renounce ties with their homeland was lost for many years.

Serebryakov remembered in Russia after the war: during the thaw Zinaida Evgenyevna finally, after 36 years apart, unable to visit daughter Tatiana (which became a painter-decorator in the Moscow Art Theater). Due to the increasing interest in Russian art of the Silver Age could arrange Serebryakova solo exhibitions in Moscow, Kiev and Leningrad. Its success in Soviet Russia in 1965 surpassed the most joyful memories of youth - Serebryakov set flush with Botticelli and other great masters. 80-year-old artist not afford it to visit the motherland, but she felt all of Russia recognition, recognition of her house, her Russia.

And in a strange land, where, as the saying goes, and the stars of tin, Zenaida E. preserved a sense of home ...

She died on 19 September 1967 and was buried in an Orthodox ceremony at the Russian cemetery of Saint-Genevieve-des-Bois.