Taras Shevchenko1857 Mangyshlak, Kazakhstan

Taras Shevchenko and a Kazakh Boy Playing with a Cat

Sepia drawing by the Ukrainian artist and poet Taras Shevchenko, created between 1856 and 1857. The artwork depicts Shevchenko in the background, observing a Kazakh boy in the foreground who is playing with a cat. The drawing was made while Shevchenko was in exile at Novopetrovsk fortress (now Fort Shevchenko in Kazakhstan) on the Mangyshlak Peninsula. During his ten years in exile, he was officially forbidden from writing or painting. However, he continued his artistic work secretly with the support of friendly locals and his friends. He was assigned to a geological expedition, which provided him with opportunities to sketch. The drawing is in the collection of the National Museum of Taras Shevchenko in Kyiv, Ukraine.

Valentina Radzymovska: founder of the Ukrainian school of physiologists and biochemistsValentyna Radzymovska (1886–1953) was a Ukrainian physician and scientist who was one of the first in the world to study the influence of acid-base balance on living cells and laid the foundations of the Ukrainian school of physiologists and biochemists. A professor at Kyiv and Lviv institutions, a participant in the liberation struggle and public and political life, she survived arrest in the case of the “Union for the Liberation of Ukraine”, Nazi occupation, and emigration to Germany and the USA. Leading figures of the Ukrainian movement gathered in her Kyiv apartment, and her scientific works combined laboratory experiments with concern for the health of children and tuberculosis patients. The portrait recreates the image of a woman for whom science, Ukraine, and human dignity were inseparable.

The signing of the Kuchuk-Kainarji Treaty, an engraving from the late 18th century.

Olga Kobylyanska together with Lesya Ukrainka (Larysa Kosach)

The Kobyliansky family

Portret Marie Bashkirtseff

Marie Bashkirtseff on a chair

Portrait of Mariebashkirtsef with a puppy

Mariya Bashkirczeva in a hat

Maria Bashkyrtseva paints a portrait in the studio

Spring

Group “Renovation Byzantine” of the first waveThe “Renovation Bizantine” group of the first draft – Mykhailo Boychuk (sitting below, in the center); together with the master – Helene Schramm, Mykola Kasperovich, T. Nalepinsky, Sophia Baudouin-de-Courtenay, future wife Sophia Nalepinska, Sophia Segnot, Yanina Levakovska; Paris, 1910

A photo of Mykhailo Boychuk in the studio with an unknown work

Mykhailo Boychuk against the backdrop of an unknown monumental mural

Mykhailo Boychuk against the backdrop of the picturesque composition "Harvest Festival" (the paintings have not survived) for the Kharkiv Chervonozavodsky Theater

A man from the Ukrainian community, the first immigrants in Brazil, demonstrates the art of having many children on the doorstep of his house

Alla Gorska during her trip to Ukraine

Chestakhivskyi Grigoriy

fragment of "Musical Grammar" by M. Dyletsky.A native of Kyiv, Mykola Dyletsky is called the creator of the Western school of partes music, which gave the world a number of outstanding composers. He wrote the theoretical work “Musical Grammar” — a monument of the Ukrainian Baroque — which was published exactly 350 years ago in Vilna (now Vilnius). In it, Dyletsky explained in detail the technical features of partes singing and composition. And what is important! In this work, he was the first in the world to describe the circle of fifths — as a graphic diagram by which a musician can trace the harmonic connections between all major and minor keys of 12 notes. For composers, this work made it easier to write music. This is really worth paying attention to… The work “The Resurrection Canon” by Mykola Dyletsky. Please listen.

Living Echo of the Cossack Elite: Georgiy Narbut in Paraska Apostol’s Kontusz with Kelep and Colonel MiloradovychIn the photograph, Georgiy Narbut stands in the Cossack hall of the Tarnovsky Museum (now a room of the Chernihiv Regional Library for Youth), fully immersed in a historical Ukrainian image. He is dressed in the kontusz of Paraska Apostol, daughter of Hetman Danylo Apostol, holding a kelep in his right hand, while to his right stands Colonel Mykhailo “Cannon” Miloradovych. This staged yet documentary scene shows Narbut not just studying Cossack-era artifacts, but literally wearing them, turning himself into a living embodiment of the Ukrainian noble-Cossack past.