User:Inesa Orel/"Kateryna" (painting by Taras Shevchenko)

"Kateryna" is one of the most renowned artworks by Taras Shevchenko, the prominent Ukrainian artist, poet, and writer. In essence, "Kateryna" is the author’s illustration of the eponymous poem, painted in the summer of 1842 in St. Petersburg, Russia. Painted by the Imperial Academy of Arts student, it has not yet revealed the full mystery, laid in the compositional features, description of the characters, visual details, landscape, and combination of colors and paints. More than one generation of Shevchenko scholars have tried to unravel the "Kateryna" mystery, and using innovative research tools will allow them to be as close as possible to their goal.

The painting was drawn for H.S. Tarnovskyi, Taras Shevchenko's familiar landowner, i.e. for his gallery. Unfortunately, Tarnovskyi could not come and take the artwork. So the writer gave information about the painting in a letter to H.S. Tarnovskyi on January 25, 1843, and briefly described it:

When Taras Shevchenko came back to Ukraine, he visited H.S.Tarnovskyi, who lived in Kachanivka by then, and brought him "Kateryna". The painting was kept in the Tarnovskyi family for over 50 years. "Kateryna" saw the world only in 1902, when the Chernihiv Museum of Ukrainian Antiquities was opened, and the painting was exhibited to the public.

Description of the Painting

It depicts the very moment when the Russian officer leaves Kateryna and goes to war, while a young woman, being already pregnant, returns to the village, totally upset and tearful.

The foreground shows a young girl Kateryna, adorned in traditional Ukrainian attire - a white blouse with a vibrant red bow, a long skirt barely grazing her ankles, and a wreath atop her head adorned with a red ribbon matching the red pinafore. Beside the path, an old baleen man in a broad straw hat and linen clothing sits beneath the shade of a tree. A little bit further away, along the dusty road, an officer of the Russian Empire is depicted astride a horse, catching up with the army - the very “Moskal”. A dog chases the rider, probably barking. The background of the painting reveals a typical landscape shrouded in mist, with only the vague outlines of a distant mill and plain discernible amidst the haze.

The main focus of the artwork is on the red color: you can see the red pinafore, the red bow on her shirt, and the red ribbon, woven into her hair. Traditionally red color symbolizes virginity and maidenhood, so Schevchenko intentionally uses it to show the scene dissonance. Simultaneously, the red color means the shame that the girl has already faced and will still undergo after the birth of her baby. Finally, the red color is interpreted as a guard: Kateryna hides her pregnancy behind a red pinafore - she wraps her hands around the abdomen as if trying to protect her unborn child.

 Mysterious Fact

There are two signatures "1842. T. Shevchenko" at the bottom right of the painting: one artist's date and signature are made in black ink and the other artist's date and signature below are made in red ink. The catalog's description of the Chernihiv Museum's collection proves that "Kateryna" has come to the museum with one red signature. So, what is the origin of the black signature? One version suggests, the painting was re-framed, covering the artist's original signature (a red one) during the Shevchenko Jubilee Exhibition in Kyiv in 1939. So, the other signature in black ink appeared above it. Who exactly put this signature is still a mystery.

Place of Storage

The "Kateryna" painting is kept in the Taras Shevchenko National Museum, Kyiv (№ Ж-100 ).

Previous storage areas:

- Property of H.S. Tarnovskyi (from 1843);

- V. Tarnovskyi's Chernihiv Museum of Ukrainian Antiquities (№ 427, from 1902);

- Chernihiv Regional Historical Museum (in1925);

- Gallery of Pictures by T.H. Shevchenko (Kharkiv, in 1933);

- Central Museum of T.H. Shevchenko (Kyiv, from 1940);

- State Museum of T.H. Shevchenko (Kyiv, from 1948).

Exhibitions

- 1929. Chernihiv. Shevchenko exhibition

- 1939. Kyiv. Shevchenko Jubilee Exhibition

- 1951. Moscow. Art Exhibition of USSR

- 1968. Prague. Shevchenko exhibition

- 1983. Kyiv. Exhibition of renovated works (without directory);

- 1984. Moscow. Exhibition of Fine Arts of the Ukrainian SSR, held at the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow.

- 1984. Kyiv. Shevchenko – artist. To the 170-th birthday of T.Shevchenko

- 2003. Lviv. The exhibition of one painting.

Interesting Facts

Kateryna's head was depicted on the front of the Ukrainian one hundred-hryvnia note, designed in 2005.