At the end of December, I take a look back at some of my favourite paintings and articles drawn from the previous year. However, as last year I spent eight months gathering and publishing a series of articles about artists from Ukraine, before I review the rest of the year, I thought it only fair to devote this to my favourite works from that series.

In Celebration (1879-81) is a brilliant demonstration of Mykola Kuznetsov’s early skills. Although this farm labourer, caught relaxing in the flowers of early summer, might appear finely detailed, there are painterly passages throughout their white blouse.

Rufin Sudkovsky’s Darial Gorge from 1884 shows this long and narrow gorge carving its way through the granite of the centre of the Caucasus Mountains, connecting Russia and Georgia. It’s one of only two crossings of the Caucasus Mountains. He shows its dramatic and near-vertical rock walls towering above a small group of travellers on the road next to the River Terek. The mountain peak vaguely visible towards the top is most probably Mount Kazbek, rising to 5,034 metres (16,515 feet).

Ilya Repin completed this huge masterpiece of the Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks in 1891. The event depicted is supposed to have taken place in 1676, but is probably largely legendary. After the Zaporozhian Cossacks had defeated Ottoman forces in battle, the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire Mehmed IV is claimed to have sent them a letter demanding that they submit to his rule. Repin here shows the Cossacks under their leader Taras Bulba, and his general Ivan Sirko, composing their forthright and explicit reply. Repin’s rich assembly of faces is shown in the detail below.

The novel Taras Bulba by Nikolai Gogol (1809-52) was published in full in 1842, and is set largely in Ukraine among Zaporozhian Cossacks. Although Gogol wrote it in Russian, he was born in Velyki Sorochyntsi in central Ukraine, and was fluent in the Ukrainian language as well.

Mykola Pymonenko’s Waiting for the Blessing (1891) shows the scene at a country church at dawn on Easter Sunday. The local population is crowding inside, while the women gather with their Paska, traditional ornamental bread that must be blessed before it can be eaten as a brunch. Note how defocussed the crowd in the background appears relative to the women and children in the foreground.

Mykhaylo Berkos’ atmospheric painting of a Street in Uman from 1895 shows the dusty semi-rural road in what has since become a city of over 80,000 in central Ukraine. During its German occupation in the Second World War, over 17,000 Jews were massacred here. It has subsequently become a site of major international Jewish pilgrimage, and home to the Uman National University of Horticulture.

Pymonenko’s classic view of Harvest in Ukraine from 1896 follows Jules Bastien-Lepage’s Naturalist compositional formula to the last detail. Its horizon is high, about three-quarters of the way up the canvas. The women in the foreground and the child’s cradle are painted in fine detail, and their edges are so crisp that they pop out. As the figures and fields recede into the background, they rapidly lose detail and their edges blur. The effect is of a vivid reality at the focus of the image, with deep recession to the far horizon.

Although best-known for those idyllic views of life in the country, Pymonenko sometimes took on more controversial issues. His Victim of Fanaticism (1899) tells a true story of persecution in the city of Kremenets in the west of Ukraine. The young Jewish woman with her back against a fence on the right was unfortunate enough to fall in love with a boy who came from an Orthodox Christian family. She is converting to Christianity, and wears a cross at her neck, but members of the local Jewish community are abusing her as a result. Pymonenko builds tension with a dark stormy sky, crows above, and sharp focus on the crowd attacking the woman.

Arkhyp Kuindzhi’s Night from 1905-08 shows horses grazing on the bank of a broad river, quite probably the Dnipro, under the light of a crescent moon.

Viktor Zarubin’s Cloud Shadows from about 1907 is an unusual elevated view of patches of fields lit in bright sunlight. Prominent among them is one containing a small flock of sheep and two shepherds.

It’s Oleksandr Murashko’s Annunciation, probably painted in 1907-08, or perhaps 1909, that takes my breath away. Apparently, he was first inspired to paint this when he saw a girl part light curtains to enter his house from the terrace outside. He saw a parallel with the entry of the Archangel Gabriel in the Annunciation.

You can see many more paintings by artists from Ukraine through three articles here:
Ukrainian Painters: 19th century Realism
Ukrainian Painters: Transition to the 20th century
Ukrainian Painters: The Modern