Svetlana Kapyrina

CURRENT EXHIBITIONS

Svetlana Kapyrina
Nikolai Ge's Ancestry and Family -
An Investigation

№3 2011 (32)

Nikolai Nikolaievich Ge was a descen¬dant of the old French aristocratic family of "de Gay". His great-grandfather Mathieu (Matvei) de Gay immigrated to Russia in 1789, at the time of the French Revolution. He settled in Moscow, "joined the emigre community and began to live quite comfortably"; a little later he even started a factory. No information about his wife is available today; we do know he had children — a daughter Victoria (1775¬1852) and son Joseph (Osip) (born between 1775 and 1776, who died before 1836.) They may have been twins, given that the years of their birth seem to be the same.