Life
Born into a serf peasant family of Hryhoriy Ivanovych Shevchenko (1782? - 1825) and Kateryna Yakymivna Shevchenko (Boiko) (1782? - August 6, 1823) of Cossack descent in the village of Moryntsi, of Kyiv Governorate of the Russian Empire (now in Cherkasy Oblast, Ukraine) Shevchenko grow up in the neighboring village of Kyrylivka that today carries the name Shevchenkove. The Shevchenko family moved to Kyrylivka soon after the birth of Taras. Two years later in Kerelivka Taras's sister Yaryna was born. In the fall of 1822 Taras started to take some grammar classes at a local Dyak. On September 1, 1823 Taras lost his mother and his father married Oksana Tereshchenko a month later; Tereshchenko already had three children. In 1824 Taras together with his father become a traveling merchant (chumak). In the spring of 1825 Taras became completely orphaned at the age of eleven when his father died at corvée.
Newly arrived in Kyiv as an apprentice, Taras went to work for Dyak Bohorsky. Soon tired of enduring Bohorsky's mistreatment, Shevchenko ran away to seek out a painting master in the surrounding villages. For several days he worked for Deacon Yefrem in Lysianka, later in other places around in southern Kiev Governorate. In 1827 Shevchenko herded community sheeps near his village. He then meets Oksana Kovalenko, a childhood friend, whom Shevchenko mentions in his works on multiple occasions. Shevchenko went as a household servant with his Russian aristocrat lord Pavel Engelhardt to Vilnius (1828–31) and then to Saint Petersburg.
"Engelhardt noticed Shevchenko's artistic talent, and apprenticed him in Vilnius to Jan Rustem, then in Saint Petersburg to Vasiliy Shiriaev for four years... There he met the Ukrainian artist Ivan Soshenko, who introduced him to other compatriots such as Yevhen Hrebinka and Vasyl Hryhorovych, and to the Russian painter Alexey Venetsianov. Through these men Shevchenko also met the famous painter and professor Karl Briullov, who donated his portrait of the Russian poet Vasily Zhukovsky as a lottery prize, whose proceeds were used to buy Shevchenko's freedom on May 5, 1838.
Read more about this topic: Taras Shevchenko
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