Taras Shevchenko
Paintings and drawings

After he became a student of the Imperial Academy of Arts, with Briullov as his mentor, Shevchenko spent most of his time at the academy and in Briullov's studio. Together they attended literary and musical evenings, and visited writers and artists. Shevchenko's social life enriched and expanded his horizons and stimulated his creativity. His friends during this period included Yakov Kuharenko, a writer and officer of the Black Sea Cossack Host who was to become his friend for life, and the artist Karl Joachim,

From June to November 1838, Shevchenko's examination marks improved enough to allow him to join a compositional drawings class. An early drawing from this class, Cossack Banquet, was completed in December that year. The following month his work was recognised by the Imperial Society for the Encouragement of the Arts, who agreed to pay him a monthly maintenance fee of 30 rubles a month.

In April 1839, Shevchenko was awarded a silver medal by the Council of the Academy. He began to master the technique of oil painting, with The Model in the Pose of St. Sebastian being among his earliest attempts. From November, he became seriously ill with typhus. That year, he received another silver medal, this time for his oil painting The Beggar Boy Giving Bread to a Dog. In September 1841, the Academy of Arts awarded Shevchenko his third silver medal, for the painting The Gypsy Fortune Teller. The following May, continual absenteeism from classes forced the Society for the Encouragement of Artists to exclude him from among its free boarders. To earn an income he produced book illustrations, such as for Nikolai Nadezhdin 's story The Power of Will, Oleksandr Bashutskyi 's publication Ours, written off from nature by the Russians, an edition of Wolfgang Franz von Kobell 's Galvanography (1843), and a book by Nikolai Polevoy, Russian Generals (1845).
oulipo:avoid_letter[o], detectable_content:number_placeholders[5]