On the fortieth day after the tragic death of Alexander Pushkin, “the sun of Russian poetry,” the artist Karl Briullov gathered the cream of Saint Petersburg’s intelligentsia in his house to honor the memory of the great poet. That same day the fate of Ukraine’s genius, the 23-year-old serf painter Taras Shevchenko, was sealed.
Apollon Mokrytsky, the Poltava-born friend of Nikolai Gogol, who participated in the tribute to Pushkin, wrote the following entry for 1837 in his Diary:
“[March] 18. Thursday. When all the others had gone, I stayed behind and told Briullov about Shevchenko. I tried to encourage him to do the right thing, and it seems to me Briullov’s help is the only way to break free of the heavy and hateful fetters of slavery. Imagine: a man of talent languishes in captivity at the mercy of a coarse master!
“[March] 31. Wednesday. In the evening...I went to Briullov’s... He sent me to summon Vas[yl] Iva[novych] (Hryhorovych, the Poltava-born conference secretary at the Academy of Arts and the Society to Promote Artists, and friend of the Gogol family — Author), and when the latter came, I suggested that they look into Shevchenko’s situation. I showed one of his poems, and Briullov was extremely pleased with it. Seeing the young man’s thoughts and feelings in the poem, he finally decided to draw him out of his subjugated condition and, to this end, told me to go to Zhukovsky’s the next day and ask him to come to his place. I wonder how they are going to carry out this plan...As I was leaving, he gave me his word that he would paint my portrait the next day.
“April 2. Briullov summoned me after lunch. Zhukovsky was there, he wanted to know details about Shevchenko. God willing, our project will get off to a good start...
“Today Briullov began Zhukovsky’s portrait — a striking resemblance indeed!”
We will never know which Shevchenko work in Russian was read to Briullov on March 31, 1837. The only clear thing is that the poem instantly struck a chord with the famous artist, so much so that he immediately agreed to paint a portrait of Zhukovsky, which was later donated as a prize for the lottery whose proceeds were used to purchase the freedom of Ukraine’s genius.
Mokrytsky made his notes hot on the heels of these events, not 20, 30 or 40 years later, as most other authors of reminiscences did. Therefore, his Diary is an irrefutable document confirming that the great honor of being among the first to initiate, organize, and play a direct role in the plan to free Shevchenko from serfdom rightly belongs to the 26- year-old nobleman Apollon N. Mokrytsky (1811-1871), the son of a titular counselor from Pyriatyn district, the province of Poltava. Shevchenko and the artist later shared a rented apartment in 1839. Unfortunately, all of Shevchenko’s letters to Mokrytsky were destroyed.
Contrary to present-day scholarly studies, treatises, and stubbornly-held theories, the 26-year-old Poltava resident’s Diary is unquestionably a reliable document that tells the truth about Shevchenko’s liberation from slavery and his life in the great master’s studio. These notes also reveal that the 21-year-old future genius of Ukraine and Mokrytsky were members of the Society to Promote Artists and had known each other ever since the serf Shevchenko signed up for painting classes.
In 1835 they took a master course with the prominent Russian artist Aleksei G. Venetsianov (1780-1847), while the Poltava- born Vasyl I. Hryhorovych (1786- 1865) taught them the esthetics and theory of art. In a show of profound gratitude for Hryhorovych’s inexhaustible concern for his welfare and his role in liberating him from slavery, Shevchenko dedicated his famous poem Haidamaky to his former art professor.
On April 25, 1838, Mokrytsky made an historic entry in his Diary: “At about two I went to Briullov’s... Zhukovsky and Count Vyielgorsky came soon after. Then Shevchenko arrived, and Zhukovsky handed him the paper confirming his freedom and all civil rights. It was a pleasure to watch this scene.”
The great Russian painter steadfastly refused, under various pretexts, to paint a portrait of the hangman of the Decembrists, Tsar Nicholas I, who on the first day of his accession to the throne ordered his troops to fire grapeshot at some commoners, who accidentally found themselves on Senate Square. Mokrytsky failed to fulfill his ardent wish to have his portrait painted by the immortal Briullov.
Did Briullov ever paint the poetic genius of Ukraine? Unfortunately, the Poltava artist’s Diary says nothing about this. We have nothing but two humorous sketches.
“The noblest of human beings! I am prepared to pray for the great Briullov,” Shevchenko would declare about his true teacher in the novella Artist, written in October 1856 from his exile in Novopetrovsky Fort. “It is worth coming from China, let alone Little Russia, to see at least one picture by Mr. Briullov. In a single sitting this prodigy of a giant completed a painting and is now displaying this wonderful work to an avid audience. His glory is great and his genius unfathomable!
“I was often at the Hermitage with Briullov. These were brilliant lectures on the theory of painting. And every time the lesson would end with Teniers, especially his ‘Meeting of the Civic Guards.’
“I, a miserable pipsqueak, had flown on wings from a dirty attic to the magic halls of the Academy of Arts. What did I do in that sanctuary? Oddly enough, I was then composing Little Russian verses, which later lay on my poor soul with such a heavy weight. It was a vocation, that’s all.”
Briullov had a brusque manner, an extremely independent nature, and a comprehensive knowledge of various subjects. He tried to instill in his students purposefulness, resolve, and independence in thought and conduct. The master dreamed of taking his pupils to Ukraine, where they could paint in a natural setting. No other professors at the academy enjoyed such boundless trust and deference from their students as Briullov..
The 24-year-old Shevchenko, who was unquestionably Briullov’s worthiest disciple, considered it a great honor to spend time with the Russian artist and learn from him. Nobody fathomed the professional secrets of the greatest masters of the world and his teacher as profoundly as Shevchenko. Fifteen days before Taras was bought out of serfdom, he and Mokrytsky visited the Hermitage.
“We had a very useful talk in this sanctuary, and this time I saw clearly as never before the beauty of the works of the first-class masters,” the Poltava artist noted in his Diary. “I began to understand Van Dyck, Rubens, Velasquez, Guido, Annibale Carracci, and others much better. I measured them against Briullov’s talent and marveled at his boundless scope. I saw the virtues of my great mentor in all of them.”
The canons of classicism prescribed that “the dirty, mean and sordid life of a plebeian” was unworthy of depiction. However, the first oil painting that Shevchenko completed in 1840, “A Beggar Boy Giving Bread to a Dog,” attracted his teacher’s attention, and the powerful force of truth surprised the examiners. Shevchenko’s sharp, piercing, and merciless eye saw and put on canvas the bitter story of a homeless child, who has only one true friend, a hungry dog. These were no conventional, lifeless, academically sterile and cold figures. What the committee members saw was the impoverished and heartrending life of an abandoned orphan.
The next works by Shevchenko — “A Group of Sleeping Female Tramps,” “A Gypsy Fortune- Teller,” “Kateryna” — also riveted the professors’ attention. Those were the first pictures of a truly national art. In September 1844 the genius published a series of etchings entitled Picturesque Ukraine. The poet became the founder of a new realistic and democratic direction in Ukrainian painting and literature.
In early December 1982 I paid my first visit to Mykhailo H. Derehus, People’s Artist, Corresponding Member of the USSR Academy of Arts, and Shevchenko Prize winner. I asked the famous painter to donate Gogol’s illustrations of Shevchenko’s works to the great writer’s museum, which was then under construction.
(Conclusion in the next issue of Ukraine Incognita)







