Madonna in an embroidered shirt

At an art exhibit of 1891 in Lviv young artist Yulian Pankevych presented his two watercolors, Jesus the Teacher and Mother of God with a Child, worldly pictures with a nationalist content with bright people’s characters. Jesus Christ and Mary were depicted in national clothing, and in both compositions the artist introduced mundane characters, village boys in colorful clothes. The watercolors, which had an interesting idea, composition and color decision, were successful. The public took interest in Pankevych’s debut, and Lviv Ukrainian-language newspaper Zoria published positive reviews for his works. But other troubles awaited the artist at the same time, the Moscow-oriented priest Seletsky accused the artist of violating ancient icon-painting traditions while depicting the clothes of Christ and Mother of God, which “became disadvantageous for the artists who are trying to change it for a costume of Hrytsko or Paraska.”

The future artist was born on July 4, 1863 in a small Transnistrian village Ustia-Zelene in a family of a local icon painter. After graduation from a popular school in Rohatyn and Berezhany gymnasium, where he obtained the first professional knowledge of drawing and painting, with the assistance of Count Didushytsky he continued his artistic education. In 1884 Yulian Pankevych entered the School of Fine Arts in Krakow, where the director was a well-known artist of historian genre, a bright pedagogue Jan Matejko. And the nucleus of the teachers was made up by professors Jablonski and Loeffler, the artists of historian and genre art, and well-known portraitist Florian Cynk. After the first year of studies for his talented work (competition drawing of a head of an antique sculpture) Pankevych received the prize of the Society of Fine Arts.

Following the advice of his friend, a student of Vienna Academy of Art Mykola Ivasiuk in autumn 1885 he starts studying at this institution, where he is entirely captivated by the whirl of artistic life of the Austrian capital. However, poor financial condition makes the young artist come back to Krakow. The studying in the Munich Academy of Art remained a dream and in autumn 1887 Pankevych comes back to Rohatyn. The artist returns to religious painting, earning his living by painting an iconostasis for a church in Yabluniv (1888), St. Elias altar-piece for a church in the village Sholomyia (1889), a composition Mary with Christ for the church in Kamianka-Strumylova near Lviv (1892).

At the same time Pankevych maintains active connections with the artistic life of Lviv and presents the abovementioned compositions, Christ the Teacher and Mother of God with a Child in 1891, as well as genre canvas Near the Well and A  Woman’s Portrait.

In 1895 the artist creates a poetic canvas Village Madonna, which is interesting due to its idea and original decision of the plot. In an essay about Pankevych’s life published in 1986 Yaroslav Nanovsky writes, “This is a genre scene from the life of Ukrainian Galician village. A young peasant is sitting on a bench near a tree, teaches her child from an open book, and looks at her child with the eyes full of love. The small boy with his hand on the book in reflection trustfully nestles up to his mother. On the tender noble face of the mother one can see the happiness of motherhood and scarcely noticeable sadness. The light turn of the mother’s head makes livelier the frontal position of her knees-long silhouette. These are quite secular types, without any traditional nimbuses or attributes. Madonna is wearing an embroidered shirt and a red skirt, and a white kerchief on her head slightly falls down on her shoulders, and on her neck she wears rich necklace, typical for village women of that time.”

In 1896 the artist goes to the Carpathians (villages Yaremche and Yamna to improve his ruined health, and at the same time gets fond of the new genre, landscape, creating a number of works, Prut Waterfall, Bahrivets Cascade, Stones near the Prut, Fishing in the Prut).

Having moved for permanent residence to Lviv, he takes an active part in the life of Ukrainian art intelligentsia. In 1898 Ivan Trush, Yulian Pankevych, and architect Vasyl Nahirny found in Lviv the Society of Development of Ruthenian Art, aimed at uniting and support of Ukrainian artists of Galicia. Incidentally, namely Pankevych played an important role in shaping of artistic life of a young man from Terebovlia, the future establisher of Ukrainian school of monumental art, Mykhailo Boichuk.

Soon the first exhibit of the Society was opened. Kornylo Ustyianovych, Antin Pylykhovsky, Ivan Trush, Stepan Tomasevych, Oleksa Skrutok, and Yulian Pankevych took part in it. This action encouraged the artist for further creative activity, and he takes up the creation of many-figure battle composition Defense of Zvenyhorod.

Meeting Ivan Franko and Mykhailo Pavlyk inspires Pankevych to work in the sphere of book illustration: anthology of Ukrainian lyrical works Chords (1903), collections Funeral Traditions and Rituals (1912), and Ukrainian Fairytales (1918) by Volodymyr Hnatiuk, etc.

In the 1920s the artist pays considerable attention to work on the portrait genre. Painting the portraits of representatives of Ukrainian liberation movement, active literary-public workers, the artist sets a task to accurately depict the appearance of people and show their inner world: in such a way he created portraits of Taras Shevchenko, Ivan Franko, Bohdan Khmelnytsky, Petro Sheremeta, self-portrait of 1925, and genre portraits of peasants of Rohatyn, etc.

When pacification – terrorist actions of the Polish government of Jozef Pilsudski against the Ukrainian population of Galicia – began, Pankevych in 1932 moves illegally to Kharkiv, where he is directed by the People’s Commissar of Education of USSR to Hryhorii Skovoroda Historical Museum on the position of senior research associate.

In spite of his old age, Yulian Pankevych performed for the museum expositions a number of ink and pencil drawings, watercolors, and oil copies of the originals of Ilya Repin, Serhii Vasylkivsky, and Mykhailo Tkachenko’s works.

However, his old nervous illness returned, in summer of 1933 the artist passed away, and the works of this period got lost during the war.