page_title: Taras Shevchenko
section_title: Childhood and youth
hierarchical_section_title: Taras Shevchenko / Life / Childhood and youth
caption_attribution_description: English: Painting of Taras Shevchenko
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: Taras Shevchenko was born on 9 March [O.S. 25 February] 1814 in the village of Moryntsi, Zvenyhorodka county, Kiev Governorate, Russian Empire (today Zvenyhorodka Raion, Ukraine). He was the third child after his sister Kateryna and brother Mykyta, in family of serf peasants Hryhoriy Ivanovych Shevchenko (1782?–1825) and Kateryna Yakymivna Shevchenko (Boiko) (1782? – 6 August 1823), both of whom were owned by landlord Vasily Engelhardt. According to the family legends, Taras's forefathers were Cossacks who served in the Zaporizhian Host and had taken part in the Ukrainian uprisings of the 17th and 18th centuries. Those uprisings were brutally suppressed in Cherkasy, Poltava, Kiev, Bratslav, and Chernihiv disrupting normal social life for many years afterwards. Most of the local population were then enslaved and reduced to poverty.
  In 1816 Shevchenko family moved back to the village of Kyrylivka (today Shevchenkove) in Zvenyhorodka county, where Taras' father, Hryhoriy Ivanovych, had been born. Taras spent his childhood years in the village. On May 24 [O.S. May 12] 1816, Taras' sister Yaryna was born, and on 7 February [O.S. 26 January] 1819—Maria. Once, young Taras went looking for "the iron pillars that hold up the sky" and got lost. Chumaks who met the boy took him with him to Kyrylivka. On 20 March [O.S. 8 March] 1821 Taras' brother Yosyp was born.
  In the fall of 1822 Taras started to take some grammar classes at a local precentor (dyak) Sovhyr. At that time Shevchenko became familiar with Hryhoriy Skovoroda's works. During 1822-1828 Shevchenko painted horses and soldiers.
  On 10 February [O.S. 29 January] 1823 his older sister and nanny Kateryna married Anton Krasytskyi, a serf "from Zelena Dibrova". On 1 September [O.S. 20 August] 1823 Taras' hard working mother died. A month later on 19 October [O.S. 7 October] 1823 his father married a widow Oksana Tereshchenko, a native of Moryntsi village, who already had three children of her own. She treated her step children and, particularly, little Taras, with great cruelty.
  On July 4 [O.S. June 22] 1824 Taras's half-sister Maria from the second marriage of Hryhoriy Ivanovych was born. In 1824 Taras, along with his father, became a traveling merchant (chumak) and traveled to Zvenyhorodka, Uman, Yelizavetgrad (today Kropyvnytskyi). At the age of eleven Taras became an orphan when, on 2 April [O.S. 21 March] 1825, his father died as a serf in corvée. Soon his stepmother along with her children returned to Moryntsi.
  Taras went to work for precentor (dyak) Bohorsky who had just arrived from Kiev in 1824. As an apprentice, Taras carried water, heated up a school, served the precentor, read psalms over the dead and continued to study. At that time Shevchenko became familiar with some works of Ukrainian literature. Soon, tired of Bohorsky's long term mistreatment, Shevchenko escaped in search of a painting master in the surrounding villages. For several days he worked for deacon Yefrem in Lysianka, later in other places around in southern part of Kiev Governorate (villages Stebliv and Tarasivka). In 1827 Shevchenko was herding community sheep near his village. He then met Oksana Kovalenko, a childhood friend, whom Shevchenko mentions in his works on multiple occasions. He dedicated the introduction of his poem "Mariana, the Nun" to her.
  As a hireling for the Kyrylivka priest Hryhoriy Koshytsia, Taras was visiting Bohuslav where he drove the priest's son to school, while also taking apples and plums to market. At the same time he was driving to markets in the towns of Burta and Shpola. In 1828 Shevchenko was hired as a serving boy to a lord's court in Vilshana for permission to study with a local artist. When Taras turned 14, Vasily Engelhardt died and the village of Kyrylivka and all its people became a property of his son, Pavlo Engelhardt. Shevchenko was turned into a court servant of his new master at the Vilshana estates. On 18 December [O.S. 6 December] 1829 Pavlo Engelgardt caught Shevchenko at night painting a portrait of Cossack Matvii Platov, a hero of the Patriotic War of
caption: Parent's hut in Kyrylivka (now village of Shevchenkove, Zvenigorodsky region, Ukraine). Taras Shevchenko, pencil, 09/1843
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