Kobzar was followed by other poetic works. His language “sparkled with a clarity, breadth and elegance of artistic expression not previously known in Ukrainian writing”, as another famous Ukrainian poet, Ivan Franko, would write later. Kobzar revealed Shevchenko’s outstanding poetic talent. It received positive reviews from Russian progressive intelligentsia. In 1840, Shevchenko’s first poetry collection, ‘Kobzar’, was published in St. Soon after, he was accepted as an external student into the Imperial Academy of Arts under Briullov’s supervision. In the spring of 1828, Shevchenko became a free man.

Karl Briullov painted a portrait of Zhukovskiy and donated it as a prize in a lottery to raise money for the payout. They took to heart Shevchenko’s great talent and decided to purchase his freedom from serfdom. They introduced him to the circle of Russian artists and poets, including the famous painter and professor, Karl Briullov, and poet Vasiliy Zhukovskiy. Petersburg, Shevchenko met compatriots from Little Russia–‘Malorossiya’, as Ukraine was called at that time in the Russian Empire. During his leisure time, Shevchenko sketched the statutes in the imperial summer gardens of St. Count Engelgardt, who noticed and encouraged Shevchenko’s painting talent, sent him to an apprenticeship for four years with a well-known painter. Shevchenko stayed with his master in Vilnius from 1828 to 1831 and then moved to Saint-Petersburg. When Shevchenko turned 14, he became a domestic servant to Count Pavel Engelgardt, the son of Vasiliy Engelhardt. He had a gift and passion for painting, which he would pursue during his leisure time. Shevchenko’s father was literate, he sent his son to be educated as an apprentice to a deacon.Īn orphan by the age of eleven, Shevchenko spent his childhood working as a houseboy and training to be a servant. Shevchenko’s family were serfs on the land of Count Vasiliy Engelhardt, a Russian aristocrat and landlord. He was born into a peasant family in a village of Cherkasy oblast in the Kiev gubernia (governorate) in 1814.

In Ukraine, such a national figure is Taras Shevchenko. Shakespeare in England, Robert Burns in Scotland, Villon and Rabelais in France, Adam Mickiewicz in Poland, Goethe and Schiller in Germany, Pushkin in Russia.

In the pantheon of “fathers of nations” of any European country, there are eminent poets who expressed the spirit of their nation and shaped its national language and imaginary.

Kobzar shevchenko