A Newly-Found Page in the Bard’s Works
It now seems difficult to tell something new connected with the name of Taras Shevchenko. But in his lifetime the Bard met a great number of people, including not only representatives of the nation’s intellectual elite, but also common serfs.
Once my attraction was drawn by a quotation from Literaturno-naukovy visnyk (Literary and Scholarly Bulletin) (Lviv, 1901, book 12, p. 23, chronicle). I will allow myself to quote the whole thing, “Mr. Lavrenty Petrovych Boiko, who lives in Bilotserkivtsi village, Lokhvytsia district, Poltava province, owns some pictures made, he says, by Shevchenko himself. They are the portrait of L. P. Boiko and the Icon of the Divine Savior. This Boiko served at Tarnovsky’s estate, where he met Shevchenko who painted the portrait and the icon for him to remember. In fact, Boiko doesn’t have the icon, he sold it to Mr. Volodymyr Pishchansky living in Lubny. We can’t say for sure whether the pictures were really made by the immortal poet, we have only heard of them.” It was signed with a cryptic Щ.Д.
A slightly modified reference to this article can be also found in the book Taras Shevchenko. Oeuvres. Vol. 4. 1857-1861 (Kyiv, 1963, p. 94.) As far as L. Boiko is concerned, we can find a commentary in Volume 10 of the academic edition of Shevchenko’s works (Kyiv, 1963, p. 139): “Boiko Lavrenty Petrovych, the Tarnovskys’ serf musician.” Some information on the portrait was also obtained by the research expedition to Shevchenko-related places, launched in 1960 by students of Kyiv State University. Soon after, the first newspaper reports came about the portrait, while the above-mentioned edition, being prepared to be published at the time, referred to this portrait as a lost one. The portrait issue was raised again when the Naukova Dumka publishing house was preparing a new extended edition of Taras Shevchenko’s works.
I should explain to the readers the reason why it is this material that drew my attention. I became interested in Lavrenty Boiko’s figure when I studied my family tree, for he was my father’s great-great grandfather. And in the early 1990s we were eventually lucky to find the portrait that our family considered lost since the 1920s. So what is it like? It was painted in oil on a 270 x 220 mm canvas, with the color of clothes and the background looking like black. In some places the paint had flaked. The rear bears an inscription that can be deciphered as “Lavr. Petro.” Some of the relatives might have made it many years ago. One can make out on the front side’s bottom the artist’s name that ends with “-ko” or even “- nko” with a characteristic fish-like scroll. There are wrinkles on the edges, which means that long ago the portrait was framed or attached to a wooden base.
It was interesting to find out when Shevchenko could have met Boiko and, possibly paint his portrait. The most credible version is that this could have happened when the poet stayed at Kachanivka in 1843 and 1845 (now it is a village in Ichnia district, Chernihiv oblast). As we know, at the time Shevchenko was traveling around Ukraine, making sketches for the album Picturesque Ukraine on instructions from the Kyiv Archeographic Commission. It must have been difficult for him to find high-quality colors in the countryside, and, maybe, the hand of the genius did touch this 150-year-old canvas obviously painted “in one stroke.” However, the Kachanivka mansion of Vasyl Tarnovsky the elder (1810-1866) was visited by many artists, which is confirmed by the unpublished album Kachanivka still kept at Chernihiv’s Tarnovsky Historical Museum. The album is full of the autographs of guests, including Riepin, N. Ge, Zhemchuzhnikov, Prianishnikov, the Makovsky brothers, et al. Among them is, naturally, T. Shevchenko and the quite well-known name of V. I. Sternberg (1818 — 1845). It is Sternberg who was initially credited with having painted the enigmatic portrait. There is a museum- cum-preserve in Kachanivka, to which our family donated the portrait.
It was suggested during the mentioned 1960 expedition that Boiko had been the prototype of the violinist and cellist Taras Fedorovich, hero of Shevchenko’s Russian-language novella The Musician (1854 — 1855). The story, which often mentions the villages of Kachanivka (renamed Kochanovka) and Dihtyari and V. Tarnovsky as Arnovsky, is set during Shevchenko’s tour of Ukraine. The novella also mentions Sternberg who met the Bard in May 1843. Interestingly enough, Lavrenty Boiko’s first and last names coincide with those of Shevchenko’s maternal cousin, Boiko being the maiden name of the poet’s mother. When they met, they might have discussed this fact. Yet, Shevchenko researchers also had a different viewpoint: another serf, Artem Naruha, was the Musician’s prototype.
Our distant ancestor died at a very old age on the eve of Word War I at Bilotsekivtsi (now Pyriatyn district, Poltava oblast). A highway has been built where he was once buried in the manor. His mother served as chambermaid in Vasyl Tarnovsky’s estate. Nothing was ever known about Lavrenty’s father, which raises certain suspicions, especially if we take into account this landlord’s temper. Incidentally, Tarnovsky’s true descendants have not been lost: one of his heiresses lives in Kyiv.
Residents of Bilotserkivtsi and the neighboring villages call Lavrenty Boiko’s descendants in no other way than Lavrinentsi after the forefather’s name. Local old-timers can tell you many interesting tales. Boiko is known to have been member of the zemstvo (local self-government — Ed.) administration in Lokhvytsia district, Poltava province. A former serf who bought himself freedom, he was a major landholder. The old-timers also remember that his fellow countrymen once accursed him — and deservedly so. Tarnovsy ordered Lavrenty (his manager) to collect documents that confirm the free Cossacks’ title to the neighboring lands. When the order was fulfilled, the perfidious landlord burned these documents down and, as was to be expected, put all the blame on a fall guy. Tarnovsky had a church built in 1861 on the Mnoha river bank, ostensibly, to atone for his sins. This story had a negative effect on the portrait’s destiny: Lavrenty’s descendants took a very dim view of him as well as his portrait. What saved the latter was the protective coating of uniformly applied resin varnish.
The year 2003 has seen as many as three major events connected with the mysterious portrait. First, experts have finally established Taras Shevchenko’s authorship. Second, the Kachanivka museum has at last had the portrait restored. Yet, the restoration was not the best page in the portrait’s history. The gloss and the sensation of newness that the restorers brought in turned out to be at odds with historical authenticity and the artist’s style of painting. Third, a stunning fact was revealed about the origins of Boiko himself: he was... an illegitimate son of Count Vasyl Tarnovsky! This put an end (did it really?) to a long chain of study and research begun by Liudmyla Zinchyk, deputy director for research of the State Taras Shevchenko Museum. Occupying this post for many years, she has won the acclaim of a prominent Shevchenko researcher. It is she who recently phoned to emotionally tell me about the portrait-related news.
This path was also strewn with obstacles. I had to apply for consultation to National University Professor Mykola Dubyna and the Kaniv museum of the Bard. These Shevchenko researchers were at first implacable. Their attitude was quite clear: there were two factors that did not allow one to unreservedly attribute the portrait to Shevchenko’s brush and to clearly identify the person portrayed. First, there was no other iconography of Lavrenty Boiko, while family testimonials, old-time tales, small articles in the press (even a hundred years ago), and even physiognomic resemblance with Boiko’s descendants were not enough for a serious researcher to identify the portrayed person. Second, the manner in which the portrait was executed did not look so academic and austere as it was supposed to be the case with Shevchenko (judging by his best paintings and taking into account that he gained a sound art education at the St. Petersburg Academy of Fine Arts). But now the fog of doubt and unawareness seems to have been finally dispelled.
