Volodymyr Borovykovskyi - Know Your Own

In 1787 Catherine II saw paintings by a Cossack from Myrhorod in Kremenchuk, and he went on to become one of the empire’s finest portraitists. Volodymyr Borovykovskyi lived and painted in Ukraine for his first 30 years; in Saint Petersburg he painted over 150 portraits and many icons.

The icon painter from Myrhorod

Volodymyr Borovykovskyi was born in 1757 in Myrhorod, into a family of Cossack officers. His father, the Cossack Luka Borovyk, painted icons and gave the boy his first drawing lessons. Volodymyr himself held the Cossack rank of fellow of the banner in the Myrhorod regiment. Until he was about thirty he stayed at home: with his father and brothers he painted churches, icons and iconostases, and portraits of Cossack officers. Some of those icons survive.

Paintings for an empress

In 1787 Catherine II toured southern Ukraine. The poet Vasyl Kapnist commissioned two paintings from Borovykovskyi for the palace in Kremenchuk where the empress was to stay. She liked them, and in 1788 the artist was invited to Saint Petersburg.

Levytskyi’s pupil

In Saint Petersburg Borovykovskyi studied under the Austrian painter Johann Baptist Lampi and under Dmytro Levytskyi, a noted portraitist of Ukrainian origin. In 1795 a series of formal and intimate portraits made him an academician, and in 1802 he became a councillor of the Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts.

An empress without a crown

Picture a state portrait of an empress: throne, crown, ermine. In 1794 Borovykovskyi painted Catherine II quite differently, out for a walk in the park at Tsarskoye Selo. It was one of the first such informal portraits of her, and she chose not to buy it. His most famous portrait of a woman is that of Maria Lopukhina (1797). In all he painted over 150 portraits, blending classicism with sentimentalism.

Icons and the last years

Borovykovskyi kept painting icons: in 1804–1811 for the Kazan Cathedral in Saint Petersburg, and also for the Trinity Cathedral of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra. He died in Saint Petersburg in 1825.

Why it matters today

Volodymyr Borovykovskyi showed that the home training of a Myrhorod icon painter could be the start of a road to the Academy of Arts. By painting the empress out for a walk in a park instead of on a throne, he showed that an artist can keep his own view even when the sitter is the most powerful woman in the land. His paintings hang both in the National Art Museum of Ukraine and in the Louvre, so the work of an artist from Myrhorod is seen at home and around the world. His path shows that a great master can grow out of a father’s workshop, as long as he keeps learning.