Mangyshlak garden (12)

Taras Shevchenko. Mangyshlak garden. Colored paper, watercolor (18.7 × 27.3 cm). [Summer 1854]. Taras Shevchenko National Museum, inv. g – 283.

At the bottom right is marked with red paint: Z, just below the inscription in pencil: Novo Petrovsk 54 Shevchenko.

Watercolor matches the description given in the memoirs of N. F. Savichev:

When Shevchenko recognize that I sometime draw, recommended me to go to the Razumanov's garden ca 7 versts from fortress. On one of the smallest sites, naturally enclosed on three sides by a stone wall, there were three large wild mulberry tree, a few beds of flowers, a young vineyard on the stamens, the bridge through a crack, a few benches – that's the whole Razumanov's garden, known by the name of a wealthy merchant who discovered and taken a liking to this place" [newspaper "Cossack bulletin", Novocherkassk, 1884, № 53 – 54, " Literary Journal", 1939, № 2, p. 117].

Explanation of the figure mark resembling the letter «Z», see in a footnote to "Portrait of H. A. Uskov».

Storage areas: collection of S. S. Botkin, State Russian Museum, Leningrad, Institute of Taras Shevchenko, Kharkiv – Kyiv, Gallery of pictures Shevchenko, Kharkiv.

N. P. Prokopenko

After publication: Taras Shevchenko Complete Works in 10 volumes. – Kyiv: ed. Academy of sciences of UkrSSR, 1964, Vol. 9, № 40 (image), p. 26 – 27 (note).