As a rule, when the topic turns to artists from Kharkiv and Sloboda Ukraine of the 19th and early 20th centuries, many people immediately think of quite a few illustrious names: Repin, Vasilkovsky, Tkachenko, Siemiradzki…
Of course, there are plenty of famous stories about great artists and their masterpieces (which, as a rule, were too expensive for most of our city’s residents at the time). But not much is known about ordinary artists, even though there are amusing stories and legends about them as well. Take, for example, Valerian Alexandrovich Yablochkin—an amateur artist who painted scenes featuring cats, whom I wrote about in an article in 2016.
In those days, icon painters—known as “malyars”—created many paintings for ordinary people. Vasily Parfentyevich Karpov recounts stories about such Kharkiv artists of the 1840s–1860s in his *Memoirs of an Old-Timer*.
At that time, there lived in our city an icon painter named Khmara, who spent all his free time—when not working at his main job—painting the natural landscapes of Ukraine and the lives of its people. As the saying goes, “A pond, a mill, and a cherry orchard.” These small paintings were eagerly purchased by the residents of our city, and they were quite inexpensive.
There was also, in those days, Ivan Kozmich Khamlo-Sokira, a “painter of signs and coats of arms.” In his youth, he enjoyed the great favor of the writer Hryhorii Fedorovych Kvitka-Osnovianenko, who loved and valued Khamlo-Sokira greatly for his outstanding talent and supported him financially in every way possible. Kvitka prepared the young artist for admission to the academy and even paid for Ivan Kozmich’s secondary education. “He lovingly illustrated Grigory Kvitka’s novellas and short stories in oil. I have seen two of his paintings: *Kozyr-Divka* and *Soldier’s Portrait*. In terms of composition and expressive power, they showed every sign of great talent,” writes Vasily Karpov. However, when Sokira was 17 years old and almost ready to enter the academy, his benefactor died unexpectedly.
On a frosty winter evening, while returning from Zhuravlevka to Kharkiv, Khamlo-Sokira saw a breathtakingly beautiful sunset. Without a moment’s hesitation, he found a quiet, secluded spot by a fence and began sketching, since he had all his art supplies with him. And to keep the cold from bothering him, he placed a bottle of vodka—which he’d bought at a bar—next to him. Some time later, the artist was found frozen to death in a sitting position. On his lap was a box containing cardboard and paints, and next to him lay an empty vodka bottle…
The icon painter Pavel Kudryashov also lived in Kharkiv at that time. Like his colleague Khmara, he, too, loved to paint in his spare time. The difference was that he didn’t paint the landscapes of Sloboda Ukraine, but rather humorous scenes. Most of these depicted scenes from Jewish daily life. One such sketch was very popular among the Kharkiv public for a long time, but I will not mention its title here so as not to offend anyone.
Naturally, folk painters were also mentioned in the songs and legends of Sloboda Ukraine.
One of the songs sung by the peasants of the Starobils’k District began with the words:
Oh, up there on the mountain,
The painters were painting,
They painted and sketched
Black eyebrows for me…
The ethnographer Pyotr Vasilyevich Ivanov recorded a legend in the Kup’yans’k District, which was later published in the 1892 issue of the journal *Ethnographic Review*. It was titled “The Legend of the Pious Painter.” Translated into modern language, it reads as follows:
Once upon a time, there lived a pious painter who skillfully painted icons both in homes and in churches. He prayed earnestly to God and had no love for devils. One day, he painted a demon and placed it “in the very spot where he used to walk alone.”
Every time he passed by that image, the artist tried to add something to it, which made the demon look more and more terrifying. The demon grew angry at this, appeared to the painter in a dream, and said, “You’ve made fun of me, but once I make fun of you, you won’t even be among people anymore.” But the painter wasn’t afraid; instead, he began to mock the image even more.
And then one day, when the villagers came to the church for the morning service, they saw that there wasn’t a speck of gold left on the iconostasis, and the golden vestments on the icons had disappeared as well. The enraged peasants rushed to search every cottage for what had gone missing from the church. As they passed the painter’s yard, they began to argue. Some of the peasants insisted on going into the painter’s house, while others said, “How can you even think that of him! He’s never touched anything that wasn’t his. And now, all of a sudden, he’s gone and stolen from the church?” In the end, after a long argument, they did search the painter’s home and found three sacks of gold from the church hidden there. The pious artist was immediately arrested and swiftly sentenced to death by hanging for theft. As the painter awaited his fate, the devil appeared to him again and said, “If you agree to place me among the images of God and bow to me five times a day, I will save you from death.” The icon painter agreed. After that, the devil transformed into the painter and was hanged, while the pious artist himself, transformed into a devil, escaped from captivity, returned home, washed the image of the devil, and placed it among the icons of God in the holy corner.
At that moment, the peasants returned to the church and saw that the gold on the iconostasis and the icons was intact, and they began to bitterly repent for having sentenced the innocent artist to death. However, as they were leaving the church, they saw that a bundle of straw was hanging from the gallows instead of a body. They gathered together, went to the painter’s house, and saw that he was alive. Noticing the face of the devil among the holy images on the wall, they asked, “Why did you hang this abomination?” In response, the painter told them everything that had happened to him. The villagers were terrified and fled from him. But the painter did not pray to the devil for long; “grief came upon him and tormented him so much that he soon disappeared without a trace, and no one knows where he went…”
To be honest, I haven’t come across any similar legends about Kharkiv. However, according to Vasily Parfentyevich Karpov—whose book *Memoirs of an Old-Timer* contains quite a few urban tales—there is an equally grim story associated with our city.
In the mid-19th century, the Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg employed several “sworn female models” who did not receive a regular salary but, at the artist’s request, posed in the academic studio and were paid from the treasury for each session (three hours) from the treasury. By mutual agreement and for a negotiated fee, they could also pose in private apartments. Among them, a young 18-year-old St. Petersburg bourgeois girl named Elizaveta, known to all artists as Leli, enjoyed great popularity. She served as the model for archangels, Circe, Psyche, Saint Praskovya, and Mary of Egypt. The contours of her body were immortalized in marble on more than one occasion. And so, in the mid-1850s, the son of a very wealthy landowner from the Kherson Governorate—an Academy-trained artist whom Karpov refers to in his notes as Valery Petrovich Mechnik—arrived in Kharkiv. Upon arriving in our city, the young nobleman rented an apartment that occupied an entire floor and immediately set to work painting, as he had already conceived the idea in St. Petersburg of creating a painting titled “Eurydice Bids Farewell to Orpheus, Who Is Being Carried Away by Charon.” To fully realize this concept, a nude model was needed for the figure of Eurydice.
In Kharkiv, given its provincial nature, one could only dream of a nude model—even a male one—and the impatient artist, possessing considerable financial resources, paid out of his own pocket to have Lelya come from St. Petersburg. Naturally, the young lady could not refuse such an offer. Upon arriving in Kharkiv, the beautiful model, at the artist’s suggestion, stayed at his apartment.
Even though Valery Petrovich kept to himself and hardly got to know anyone, within a few days both he and Lelya had become the talk of the town and caused a sensation in our city. Even the neighborhood watchman, Dudyushkin, came to their apartment to ask for information. “What kind of painting does Mechnikov want to paint, and what kind of women are these models who allow themselves to be stripped naked? But after meeting the son of a wealthy and distinguished nobleman and taking a look inside his wallet, Dudyushkin, being a man of discernment, understood what was going on and withdrew from the artist’s apartment for good, denouncing the ignorance of the masses…”
As for the town, there were all sorts of stories circulating about Lela. People said she was a Turkish woman who had escaped from a harem, since a Christian girl would never have agreed to such a thing. Time passed, and “that rascal Mechnikov,” having finished painting the figure of Eurydice, left Kharkiv and generously rewarded the model for her efforts. But Lela, instead of leaving our city for good, decided to stay. She wanted to use the money she’d earned to open a small sewing workshop, eventually marry well, and live a peaceful life as a homemaker, wife, and mother. At first, things went well, and she had quite a few orders in the beginning. After all, many people brought her sewing projects just to catch a glimpse of that very “Turkish woman who had escaped from the harem.”
“Tell me, dressmaker, are you of Turkish descent?” the customer asked her unexpectedly.
“No, ma’am, I’m Russian.” “My name is Elizaveta, and my last name is Petrushkina.”
“Are you Muslim?
” “No, I’m Christian…”
“How long ago were you baptized?”
In addition to her commissions, Leli had no shortage of admirers. Being a young woman who was not only beautiful but also practical, she kept several of them—former models—in reserve as potential suitors. But as for the wealthy contractor (an officer in charge of horse procurement) who was persistently courting her, she “fleeced him like a sheep”—that is, she milked him for money. Eventually, many grew tired of this, and, as Karpov writes, “on a foggy winter morning, Lelya was found in the University Garden, hanged from a black maple branch. She was stripped naked, and her dress lay at her feet…” All her valuables were also found on her. The perpetrator of this crime was never identified.
Of course, if you look around, I’m sure you’ll find quite a few more stories like that. After all, we live in a city whose past we could talk about endlessly…
