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Taras Shevchenko

Encyclopedia of the life and works

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Self-portrait 1857

Taras Shevchenko. Self-portrait 1857

Taras Shevchenko. Self-portrait.
[Nizhny Novgorod]. [Not later than 28 Nov] 1857.
Stained paper, Italian and white pencil (31.4 × 24.6 cm).

Right below placed author date and monogram (with Italian pencil): 1857 Ш.

At the bottom under the portrait placed ink inscription by Shevchenko's hand: To Mikhail S. Shchepkin, in memory 24 December 1857 from Taras Shevchenko.

Inscriptions made in memory of the Shchepkin's arrival to Shevchenko in Nizhny Novgorod.

Shevchenko's letters knows only about one of his self-portrait with beard, made in Nizhny Novgorod in 1857. He wrote about it to M.M.Lazarevsky in the letter of 29 November [Author's date of the letter "18 Nov" wrong, see entry in the diary of November 29, 1857]:

"I draw by pencil for your my face, and have nobody who can transfer it, but in mail I'm afraid it be obliterated. I thought send it with Fedor, so devil, the enemy of our good intentions, you see that made".

Obviously, this picture Shevchenko gave to Shchepkin, because he sent to Lazarevsky another portrait made in early January 1858.

Previous storage: property Shchepkin's family, Tsvetkov's Gallery, the State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Institute of Taras Shevchenko, Gallery of paintings by T. Shevchenko (Kharkiv), Central Museum of Taras Shevchenko (Kyiv).

1902 – on display at the Exhibition of N.V.Gogol and Vasily Zhukovsky (Album, M., 1902, Table 40.)

1939 – on the Republican Shevchenko's anniversary exhibition in Kiev (Product, № 260).

National Taras Shevchenko Museum, USSR Academy of Sciences, Kyiv, inv. № g-825.

N.P. Prokopenko

After publication: Taras Shevchenko Complete Works in 10 volumes. – Kyiv: ed. Academy of sciences of UkrSSR, 1963, t. 10, № 17 (image), p. 13 (notes).