The museum presents a portrait of the writer’s wife, Khristina Mikhailovna Sergeyeva-Tsenskaya, created by Yury Bolshakov, an amateur artist and sailor in the Black Sea Fleet. The portrait was painted from a photograph in the same style as the portrait of Sergey Sergeyev-Tsensky in 1957.
Khristina Sergeyeva-Tsenskaya is depicted against the blue sky with white-pink clouds. She is dressed in a light brown jacket with narrow dark brown stripes and a white blouse and stands near a cypress tree, holding a green rose branch in her left hand. The waist-length portrait depicts Sergeyeva-Tsenskaya en face and features a metal plate with a dedicatory inscription, “To our dear Aunt Khrista on her birthday from Marusya and Yasha. February 19, 1958.” It was a gift from the Leonov family (Maria Leonova, Khristina Mikhailovna’s niece, and her husband Yakov).
The Leonov family lived in Sevastopol. Yakov Leonov was an officer of the Black Sea Fleet and was keen on photography. The museum contains several photo albums with his works, as well as numerous letters, postcards and presents from the Leonov family to the Sergeyev-Tsenskys.
Khristina Sergeyeva-Tsenskaya dedicated almost 40 years of her life to creating the perfect conditions for her husband’s work and taking care of all the chores at the house and around the estate. She headed the household, made sure that Sergeyev-Tsensky was fully focused on the creative process and protected him from insistent visitors and admirers of his talent. After her husband’s death, she initiated the establishment of the Alushta Literary Memorial Museum in the writer’s house. This house was the writer’s home for over 50 years until his death on December 3, 1958. Khristina Sergeyeva-Tsenskaya managed to preserve not only the environment in which the writer lived and created but also the atmosphere of creativity that reigned over Orlinaya Mountain, the “writer’s studio”.
The last major renovations of the writer’s house took place under the supervision of Khristina Sergeyeva-Tsenskaya in 1960. In order to repair the house before handing it over to the state as the Sergeyev-Tsensky Museum, Sergeyeva-Tsenskaya transferred the publishing rights for the writer’s works to the Union of Soviet Writers.
