1. Verse in Vision
an exhibition of prints by
Taras Shevchenko
cambridge
ukrainian
studies
cambridge
ukrainian
studies
www.CambridgeUkrainianStudies.org.uk
departments of
slavonic studies
and history of art
2. Works consulted
Taras Shevchenko. Povne zibrannia tvoriv v desiaty tomakh. Vols.
!
7-10. Kyiv, 1961.
Z. P. Tarakhan-Bereza. Shevchenko -- poet i khudozhnyk. Kyiv, 1985.
Pavlo Zaitsev. Zhyttia Tarasa Shevchenka. Kyiv, 1994.
VERSE IN VISION
AN EXHIBITION OF PRINTS
BY TARAS SHEVCHENKO
CAMBRIDGE • LONDON
APRIL - OCTOBER 2009
Cambridge Ukrainian Studies, a new initiative of the Department of
Slavonic Studies at the University of Cambridge, is pleased to
present ‘Verse in Vision: An Exhibition of Prints by Taras
Shevchenko’ in conjunction with the Department of History of Art
and the British Ukrainian Society.
Future Ukrainian Studies Events Michaelmas Term 2009
A night of Ukrainian ethno-groove-folk-punk music
The Junction, Cambridge
‘Public Readings at a Theatre in Cambridge’
A celebration of the works of Nikolai Gogol’ / Mykola Hohol’
Lectures, film screenings, and more
For more details, visit
www.CambridgeUkrainianStudies.org.uk
Join our mailing list or find us on facebook
Cambridge Ukrainian Studies aims to promote and contribute to
the study of Ukraine in the United Kingdom, Europe, and beyond.
It is committed to deepening public understanding of Ukraine and
to advancing fresh, innovative approaches to research on Europe’s
second-largest country, which is a critical crossroads between ‘East’
and ‘West’ with a rich historical, linguistic, and cultural inheritance.
The first stage of the Ukrainian Studies initiative is an introductory
paper on the language, literature, and culture of Ukraine, available
to students in their second year and above, starting in academic
year 2008-2009. The University of Cambridge is also pleased to
continue its open courses in the Ukrainian language.
Visit us online at
www.CambridgeUkrainianStudies.org.uk
3. A Brief Introduction to His Life and Art
Portraiture
Taras Hryhorovych Shevchenko was born a
serf in the village of Moryntsi (central
Ukraine) in 1814. Although his poetry won
him worldwide fame, drawing was his first
passion. Orphaned at the age of twelve,
Shevchenko found refuge from loneliness and
hardship in studies and sketches, and his
owner Pavlo Enhel'hardt soon took notice of
his talent. At the age of fourteen, Shevchenko
became Enhel'hardt’s kozachok (houseboy). In
1831 he left with Enhel'hardt’s retinue for
Saint Petersburg, enduring a bitterly cold journey dramatised in a
painting of 1961 by Al'bin Gavdzinskii (above left).
Shevchenko produced 43 self-portraits and over 150 portraits of
friends, patrons, and prominent figures. In 1858, he met the famous
African-American stage actor Ira Aldridge, whose sensational turn
as Othello was captivating audiences on a tour across the Russian
Empire. Katerina Iunge, the daughter of Count F. P. Tolstoi who
acted as an interpreter for the two men, recalled their poignant
first encounter: ‘Beyond their similar character, the two had much
in common and shared profound feelings for one another: one had
been a serf, the other a slave. Both experienced enormous
suffering and sadness in life, and both deeply loved their people.’
In Saint Petersburg, Shevchenko often stole away to the Summer
Garden to sketch the marble Venetian sculptures lining its paths.
There he met the Ukrainian artist Ivan Soshenko (1807-76), who
became a passionate advocate of Shevchenko’s art and a vocal
campaigner for his freedom.
Soshenko introduced Shevchenko to
Karl Briullov (1799-1852), who had
recently returned to Saint Petersburg
from Rome to take up the post of
professor at the Imperial Academy of
Arts. This introduction is featured in
a painting of 1952 by Heorhii
Melikhov (left). Briullov was
impressed with the twenty-four-yearold Shevchenko and devised a plan with Soshenko and others to
buy his manumission from serfdom. To raise the needed funds,
Briullov donated his portrait of the Russian poet Vasilii Zhukovskii
as an item for an exclusive auction held in May 1838. The wife of
Tsar Nikolai I, Aleksandra Fedorovna, was the high bidder.
As a gesture of friendship, Shevchenko offered to paint Aldridge’s
portrait. Iunge described the sitting in this way: ‘For a few minutes
only the scratching of the pencil on paper could be heard, but
Aldridge could hardly sit still. He began to squirm, we exclaimed
that he had to sit at attention, he grimaced, and then we burst out
in laughter. Shevchenko stopped his work in frustration. Aldridge
made a frightened face and once again sat quietly. Suddenly he
said, “May I sing?” Shevchenko acquiesced. Then Aldridge began a
beautifully touching melody, which gradually became more lively
and ended with him dancing wildly around the studio... Captivated
by all the merry-making, Taras Hryhorovych sang Ukrainian songs
and became engrossed in conversation about the similar features
of different peoples...’
The signatures of both the artist and the actor can be found at the
bottom of the portrait.
Portrait of Ira Aldridge
!"#$#%$ &'#( )*+#,+-.
1858
4. A free man, Shevchenko returned to Ukraine in the 1840s to find
a society and culture in pain. In the poetic and visual texts of this
period, we sense the artist’s profound concern for the slavery and
decay overtaking his homeland – but also his faith in a future of
justice and freedom for all people.
In 1847 Shevchenko was arrested for his association with the
Brotherhood of Saints Cyril and Methodius, a secret organisation
based in Kyiv that called for federalism and equal rights for all
peoples in the Russian Empire. During his interrogation, the
authorities discovered on his person a collection of anti-tsarist
satirical poems, which provoked a particularly harsh punishment.
Sentenced to military exile near the Caspian Sea, Shevchenko was
forbidden to write, paint, or draw by Tsar Nikolai himself.
Shevchenko defied the tsar’s order and continued to produce
poetry and art throughout his ten-year exile, often concealing his
work in his boots. The drawings and paintings from this period
express a deep sense of personal suffering and alienation as well
as a fascination and solidarity with the peoples of Central Asia.
In 1857 Shevchenko was finally
pardoned and released from
military service. Upon his return
from exile, he was placed under
police surveillance. In the last
years of his life, he was recognized
as an academician-engraver by the
Imperial Academy of Arts. The
bestowal of the honor is the
subject of a 1949 painting by Ihor Rieznyk (right).
Taras Shevchenko died in March 1861, only days before Tsar
Aleksandr II’s Emancipation Reform. He left behind a corpus of
over a thousand works of art, of which 835 are extant today.
5. Genre Paintings
Shevchenko studied under one of the most prominent genre
painters of his time, Karl Briullov. Although Briullov won fame
with his historical epic The Last Day of Pompeii (1830-33), he made
his early career by painting scenes drawn from everyday life:
confessions of Italian women in church, for example, or the quiet
parting of two young lovers, as in An Interrupted Date (Prervannoe
svidanie, 1823-27), featured below.
Shevchenko’s Gypsy Fortune Teller, which was exhibited in Saint
Petersburg in 1841 and awarded a medal from the Imperial
Academy of Arts, is a homage to his teacher. Note the placement
of the painting’s subjects (whose hands unite at the center of the
canvas), the masterful simulation of sunlight filtered through tree
leaves, the girl’s blue sash, even the dog -- all of which seem to
refer to Briullov’s earlier work.
Gypsy Fortune Teller
Циганка-ворожка
1841
6.
7. Landscapes
Shevchenko’s landscape paintings reveal the true measure of his
talent. Alternately joyous and mournful, they are meditations on
the passage of time and the permeability of the physical and
spiritual worlds.
Ascension Cathedral in Pereiaslav is a part of the artist’s Album of
1845. From April to October 1845, Shevchenko travelled
throughout Ukraine devoting watercolours and works in pencil
and sepia to monuments of Ukraine’s art and architecture as well
as the everyday life of Ukrainian villagers.
Ascension Cathedral makes an appearance in Shevchenko’s novella
Twins of 1855: ‘This cathedral -- whose architecture is wonderful,
grand, half-Baroque, half-Byzantine -- was built in [1700] by that
renowned anathema, Ivan Mazepa.’ The reference to Mazepa, today
a national hero of Ukraine, drips with sarcasm. Although
cathedrals, monasteries, and the clergy flourished in Ukraine during
his reign, the het'man was anathemised by the Russian Orthodox
Church for betraying Peter I in defense of the sovereignty of the
Cossack Hetmanate. The anathema remains in effect to this day.
Ascension Cathedral in Pereiaslav
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1845
8.
9. Activist Paintings
Shevchenko’s poetry abounds with stirring calls for social justice
and equality. His paintings are no different. While in exile, he
composed a series of works in sepia which call attention to the
poverty and suffering of children in Central Asia. In Kazakh Boy
Playing with Cat, our experience of what should be a lighthearted
moment is shaken by the sight of the child’s distended belly and
the play of dark shadow in the foreground that obscures his face.
Note how the artist places himself in the work behind the
Kazakh boy, effectively in solidarity with him. He does the same
in Baigushi (The Baigush, 1853), which features two young Kazakh
brothers begging for food:
In the dialogue between the painting’s ideal spectator in the
imperial center and the painting’s subject on the imperial
periphery, Shevchenko notably positions himself on the side of
the latter, on the side of the neglected and the poor -- and looks
out at the spectator with an expectant gaze.
Kazakh Boy Playing with Cat
Казахський хлопчик, що грається з кішкою
1856-57
10. cambridge
ukrainian
studies
departments of
slavonic studies
and history of art
!
!
!
!
Custom framing provided by
the Cambridge Framing Centre
20 Sussex Street, Cambridge CB1 1PA
Embrace, then, my brothers,
The smallest brother...
!
!
With the exception of the images provided by Cambridge
Ukrainian Studies and the Department of History of Art,
the prints exhibited in ‘Verse in Vision’
are the generous gift of the
Taras H. Shevchenko Museum in Toronto, Canada.
We thank them very much for their partnership.
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/+0&($1-2- #*+'+...
Taras Shevchenko
‘My Friendly Epistle’ (1845)
11. cambridge
ukrainian
studies
departments of
slavonic studies
and history of art
!
!
!
!
Custom framing provided by
the Cambridge Framing Centre
20 Sussex Street, Cambridge CB1 1PA
Embrace, then, my brothers,
The smallest brother...
!
!
With the exception of the images provided by Cambridge
Ukrainian Studies and the Department of History of Art,
the prints exhibited in ‘Verse in Vision’
are the generous gift of the
Taras H. Shevchenko Museum in Toronto, Canada.
We thank them very much for their partnership.
"#$%&%'( ), #*+', &-.,
/+0&($1-2- #*+'+...
Taras Shevchenko
‘My Friendly Epistle’ (1845)
12. Verse in Vision
an exhibition of prints by
Taras Shevchenko
cambridge
ukrainian
studies
cambridge
ukrainian
studies
www.CambridgeUkrainianStudies.org.uk
departments of
slavonic studies
and history of art
