page_title: Taras Shevchenko
section_title: First successes
hierarchical_section_title: Taras Shevchenko / Life / First successes
caption_attribution_description: Русский: «Чигиринский Кобзарь и Гайдамаки. Две поэмы на малороссийском языке» Шевченко 1844 год
context_page_description: Taras Hryhorovych Shevchenko, also known as Kobzar Taras, or simply Kobzar, was a Ukrainian poet, writer, artist, public and political figure, as well as folklorist and ethnographer. His literary heritage is regarded to be the foundation of modern Ukrainian literature and, to a large extent, the modern Ukrainian language. Shevchenko is also known for many masterpieces as a painter and an illustrator.
  He was a member of the Brotherhood of Saints Cyril and Methodius and a fellow of the Imperial Academy of Arts. In 1847 Shevchenko was politically convicted for writing in the Ukrainian language, promoting the independence of Ukraine and ridiculing members of the Russian Imperial House.
context_section_description: Shevchenko was accepted as a student into the Academy of Arts in the workshop of Karl Briullov in the same year. The following year he became a resident student at the Association for the Encouragement of Artists. During annual examinations at the Imperial Academy of Arts, Shevchenko won the Silver Medal for landscape painting. In 1840 he again received the Silver Medal, this time for his first oil painting, The Beggar Boy Giving Bread to a Dog.
  Shevchenko began writing poetry while still being a serf, and in 1840 his first collection of poetry, Kobzar,  was published. According to Ivan Franko, a renowned Ukrainian poet in the generation after Shevchenko, "[Kobzar] was "a new world of poetry. It burst forth like a spring of clear, cold water, and sparkled with a clarity, breadth and elegance of artistic expression not previously known in Ukrainian writing".
  In 1841, the epic poem Haidamaky was released. In September 1841, Shevchenko was awarded his third Silver Medal for The Gypsy Fortune Teller. Shevchenko also wrote plays. In 1842, he released a part of the tragedy Mykyta Haidai and in 1843 he completed the drama Nazar Stodolia.
  While residing in Saint Petersburg, Shevchenko made three trips to Ukraine, in 1843, 1845, and 1846. The difficult conditions Ukrainians had made a profound impact on the poet-painter. Shevchenko visited his siblings, still enserfed, and other relatives. He met with prominent Ukrainian writers and intellectuals Yevhen Hrebinka, Panteleimon Kulish, and Mykhaylo Maksymovych, and was befriended by the princely Repnin family, especially Varvara.
  In 1844, distressed by the condition of Ukrainian regions in the Russian Empire, Shevchenko decided to capture some of his homeland's historical ruins and cultural monuments in an album of etchings, which he called Picturesque Ukraine. Only 6 first etchings were printed because of the lack of means to continue.
  
  An album of watercolors from historical places and pencil drawings was done in 1845.
caption: Kobzar and Haidamaky, 1844[52]
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