Vasilkovsky, Sergey Ivanovich

The environment in which Sergey Vasilkovsky grew up was a fertile environment for the formation of a creative personality. His grandfather was a chumak from a Cossack family, and his father was a clerk. Perhaps it was he who revealed the aesthetic expressiveness of the calligraphic line.

In 1861, the Vasilkovsky family moved to Vladimir Volynsky , which already at that time was a major cultural center.

Training

Sergey received his first skills in art at the Kharkov gymnasium, his teacher was Dmitry Bezperchiy (1825-1913), a former serf, a fellow practitioner of Taras Shevchenko in the workshop of Karl Bryullov .

During the years of training, Vasilkovsky had the opportunity to use the library of his relative, poet V. Alexandrov. The library contained works by Nikolai Gogol , Ivan Kotlyarevsky , Taras Shevchenko. These books had a strong influence on him. After five years of schooling, at the request of his father, Vasilkovsky enters the Kharkov Veterinary School . However, in 1873, due to financial difficulties, studies at the school were interrupted. Vasilkovsky worked for some time as an office clerk at the Kharkov Treasury.

He studied at the Imperial Academy of Arts (1876-1885), in a landscape class with MK K. Klodt and V. D. Orlovsky . Successful training was complemented by impressions from the exhibitions of Wanderers and trips to their homeland.

In 1879, for a sketch from nature, Sergei Ivanovich received the first academic award - a small silver medal. In his student years he was in great need, he lived in the attic of the Academy, in the so-called "breech-box", together with Porfiry Martinovich , Afansiy Slasten , Gennady Ladyzhensky , Nikolai Samokish , Ian Tsionglinsky , who also became famous artists. In 1881 he received a second small silver medal.

In 1883 , completing the curriculum, travels around Ukraine , creates a number of famous landscapes “Spring in Ukraine”, “Summer”, “Stone beam”, “On the outskirts”, which allowed him to take part in the competition for the gold medal and in the All-Russian academic exhibition. For landscape sketches in which he conveyed the picturesque nature of Ukrainian nature, Vasilkovsky received 5 silver and one small gold medal. For the painting “At the Donets” under the program “Landscape with Trees, Figures of People, and Animals in the Foreground” (1885, not preserved), he received a large gold medal , which gives the right to a foreign trip for professional improvement as a pensioner at the Academy of Arts . He graduated from the Academy of Arts with the title of class artist of the 1st degree. ^[one]

Traveling Europe

In March 1886, Vasilkovsky went abroad. He lives in France , travels in England , Spain , Italy , South Africa and Germany . There he gets acquainted with the collections of art museums, improves his skills, guided by the advice of Vladimir Orlovsky and Ivan Pohitonov , who lived in Paris at that time, works a lot, and exhibits his works in the Paris Salon .

Staying abroad strengthened the desire to direct his talent to the development of the landscape genre. Vasilkovsky walks on foot along the Kharkiv and Poltava provinces, descends along the Dnieper to Zaporozhye . He paints forests and meadows, rural huts and streets at different times of the year, often with simple genre motifs , which organically fit into nature - avoiding simplification, deepening the structure of images. Lyrical digressions, historical landscapes on Cossack themes, which convey the spirit of a bygone era, are interwoven into the canvas of modern images of the earth.

Starting from the academic period, he was attracted by the motives for the clashes between the Cossacks and the Tatars, and he attended the battle workshop, where his friend Nikolai Samokish studied. Mostly, these are works of a generalized nature, in which there is no dynamic action or an ethnographic-everyday plot that was widespread at that time (with the exception of such paintings as “The Clash of Cossacks with the Tatars” (1892), “Dating” (1894)), they are interpreted romantically, related in mood with folk song folklore.

• "Spring", 1885.
• "Landscape", 1886.
• The Partridge Hunt, 1888.
• "The vicinity of Helos, in Spain", 1888.
• Zaporozhets on Intelligence, 1889 (the work was in the collection of the Taganrog Museum of Local Lore , in 1941 it was abducted by the invaders).
• "Cossack Picket", 1888, Kharkov Art Museum .
• “The Watchman of the Zaporozhye Liberties” (“Cossacks in the Steppe”), circa 1890, National Museum of Fine Arts.
• “On Guard”, approx. 1890, Odessa Art Museum .
• “Cossack in the steppe. Alarms ”, approx. 1905, Sumy Art Museum.
• "Cossack Mountain", 1890, Kharkov Historical Museum named after N. F. Sumtsov .
• “Cossack Field”, approx. 1890, Sumy Art Museum .
• "Kuban", ????, Krasnodar Regional Art Museum named after F. A. Kovalenko .

Vasilkovsky’s favorite plot is an armed Cossack horseman in the steppe, or a group of Cossacks on guard, on horseback riding or on vacation.

Vasilkovsky - the author of the famous portrait of Shevchenko autographed (1910-1911). The poet is depicted sitting, amid a wide panorama of the steppe with a low horizon and high sky. Vasilkovsky also painted a portrait of the poet (1907), relying on one of the most widely circulated portraits made by M. Doss in April 1858 , or using a portrait of Shevchenko, published in the publication: Shevchenko T. G. Kobzar : With a portrait and an autograph. - К., 1899; or to the image of the poet created by I. Repin , from the same photograph. This portrait is not signed. but, apparently, created by the artist in 1907 (according to the inscription on the reverse side made by I. Boyko, a descendant of the former owner of the portrait, S. I. Boyko, a friend of Vasilkovsky).

Highly appreciating creative independence, Vasilkovsky did not bind himself with membership in any associations and submitted his works to exhibitions of various partnerships in St. Petersburg , Kharkov , Kiev . Vasilkovsky departed from the Academy.

In 1900, organized in Kharkov the first solo exhibition of 120 works.

Together with Samokish, he issued a large album of drawings, with annotations by Yavornytsky - "Ukrainian Antiquity" (1910). And in 1912 , another work was published in Leipzig - “Motives of Ukrainian Ornament”, to which Valkovsky wrote numerous watercolors with interesting patterns of embroideries of the 18th - early 19th centuries. ^[2]

Before his death, he bequeathed to the Museum of Archeology and Ethnography of Sloboda Ukraine more than 1340 of his works and a considerable sum of money to create a large national art museum in Kharkov.

The artist Sergey Vasilkovsky left almost 3,000 works , in the last days of his life he donated 1,500 of them to the Kharkov Art Museum . Unfortunately, most of them died during the Great Patriotic War , and today in museums and private collections are about 500 of his works.

The “General History of Arts” characterizes Vasilkovsky as a representative of the Ukrainian national school of painting, continuing the traditions of the Wanderers , highlighting wall paintings in the Poltava Zemsky House “Election of Colonel Pushkar”, “Fight of the Cossack Golota with the Tatar” (1900-1914). The artist is characterized by an interest in national images and history. ^[3]

• Vasilkovsky, Sergey Ivanovich // Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary : 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). - SPb. , 1890-1907.
• Ogіvska I. Sergiy Ivanovich Vasilkivsky. - K .: Naukova Dumka, 1980 .-- 164 p.
• Bezkhutriy M.S. І. Vasilkivsky. Naris about life and creativity. - К., 1954.
• Sergiy Vasilkivsky: Album. - K., 1987.
• Laska I. M. Sergiy Vasilkivsky.
• S. N. Kondakov. Anniversary Directory of the Imperial Academy of Arts. 1764-1914 . - St. Petersburg: Partnership R. Golike and A. Vilborg, 1915. - T. 2. - P. 34. - 454 p.

• Sergey Vasilkovsky. A set of postcards. Kiev, 1984.
• Sergey Vasilkovsky. Exhibition catalog. Kiev, 2013.