Background

Ethnicity: It is believed that Mykola Samokysh's father was of Hungarian ancestry.

Samokysh was born in Nezhin, Russian Empire (now Ukraine), on October 25, 1860. His father was a postman.

Education

Mykola Samokysh spent his childhood in Nosivka with the family of his maternal grandfather, who was a Cossack. There he learned about Ukrainian folk art, songs and legends. From 1868 he was a student of the Nizhyn two-year elementary school and then the Nizhyn Lyceum of Prince Bezborodko (today Nizhyn Gogol State University). In the Lyceum, Samokysh took his first drawing lessons from R. Tsibulsky, who was a graduate of the Petersburg Academy of Fine Arts (now Ilya Repin St. Petersburg State Academic Institute for Painting, Sculpture and Architecture).

Samokysh's first attempt to enter the Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts was unsuccessful, but he gained support from an associate of Professor Bogdan Willewalde, and eventually was admitted. He studied there from 1879 to 1885 with Mikhail Clodt and Valery Jacobi as well as Bogdan Willewalde. Between 1885 and 1888 he studied in Paris under the supervision of Edouard Detaille, a French academic painter and military artist.

Career

At the end of the 1880s, Samokysh together with Franz Roubaud travelled to the Caucasus to create some large artworks for a panorama at the Tbilisi Historical Museum. He made three big paintings, The Battle at Avilyar in 1877, Battle at the Jori River and Defence of the Naura Stanitsa. Concurrently, he painted the work Watering Herd of Horses.

He taught at the Petersburg Academy of Fine Arts (now Ilya Repin St. Petersburg State Academic Institute for Painting, Sculpture and Architecture) from 1894 to 1918. In the 1890s, Mykola Samokysh particularly excelled in the medium of graphic art and created quite a few illustrations to classic literary works. During his trip to India and Egypt, he executed a lot of pen drawings depicting the hard labour endured by national tribes enslaved by colonizers. Around that same time, he produced a series of drawings depicting the defence of Sevastopol.

In 1900 Samokysh produced Four at the Bend in the Road, the most distinctive feature of this canvas was a brilliant portrayal of horses racing at full gallop. The same year he and the artist S. Vasilkivsky collaborated in publishing the album Old Ukraine. Later, he published another album, Ukrainian Ornaments, which came out in Prague.

In 1915 Mykola Samokysh and some of his students at the Academy formed an "Art Squad" and went to the Eastern Front to make sketches. In 1918, after the Academy was abolished, the artist moved to Yalta with the Armed Forces of South Russia. In 1922 he went to Simferopol, where he provided support to talented young artists and eventually organized an art school that received official state recognition.

In 1934, Samokysh was given what would prove to be his largest commission. He acted as a managing consultant for a gigantic panorama depicting the Siege of Perekop. From 1936 he worked at the art institute in Kharkiv (now the Kharkiv State School of Art).

Among the hundreds of book illustrations he created, the most notable are likely to be those for stories by Marko Vovchok, Taras Bulba by Nikolai Gogol, Mykola Dzherya by Ivan Nechuy-Levytsky, and Imperial Hunting in Russia by Nikolai Kutepov. He also produced illustrations for Dead Souls and created murals for the Tsarskoye Selo railway station.

Shortly before the war, already 80 years old, Mykola Samokysh still actively worked as an artist and instructor at the Kharkov Art Institute.

Achievements

• 

  Mykola Samokysh was a highly acclaimed artist of his time. Over the course of his artistic career, he produced a great number of significant artworks, including Speeding Troika, Cossacks at a Tavern, Pursuit, The Courage of General Raevsky, Battle of Maloyaroslavets, Wolf, etc.
  
  In 1880 the artist received his first award, a Small Silver Medal for his etude portraying a horse. The following year he was awarded another Small Silver Medal for his sketch Return of Troops to Their Homeland, and in 1883 a Great Silver Medal for an academic drawing and an etching. Soon, an important event in the artist’s life took place, when his oil painting Out for a Drive, painted during his summer holidays in the Penza Gubernia, was purchased by the famous Russian collector and connoisseur P. Tretyakov.
  
  For his work Return of Russian Cavalry After Attack at Austerlitz Samokysh was awarded a Great Gold Medal and granted a scholarship for four years to study abroad in Paris, Berlin and Italy. In 1900 he was awarded a Great Silver Medal in Paris for his artwork Four at the Bend in the Road.
  
  Today, his works are presented in the State Tretyakov Gallery, the State Museum of Fine Arts, the State Russian Museum, in Kyiv National Museum of the Russian Art, in the Art Museums of Kharkiv, Simferopol, etc.

Works

More photos

• painting

  • Troika

  • Troika

  • Attack of Lithuanians

  • Evening in Crimea

  • Trooper in Galicia

  • Self Portrait

  • From the artist's diary, the War 1904-1905

  • The Battle of the Sea 7 November 1800

  • Chase. Artist's diary

  • From the artist's diary, the War 1904-1905

  • The Battle Under Kepri Kay

  • Fight Maxim Krivonos With Jeremiah Vishnevetsky

  • Battle for the Flag

  • Fight Under Yaroslav

  • Wolf

  • The banner of the 1st Nerchinskoye Regiment of the Trans-Baikal Cossack Troops

  • The Attack of the Shevardin Redoubt

  • Standing by

  • Killed horse

  • The battle of Wafangow

  • Detachment of Transbaikalian Cossacks With Translator

  • Herd of Oryol trotters

  • Courage of General Raevsky

  • Alupka

  • The Attack

  • The Attack of Cavalry

  • The Attack of Lancers

  • The Attack of the Lithuanian Regiment

  • The Battle near Chernigov

  • The Crown Prince

  • The Crowns and Scepter

  • Going to the Battle

  • Grand Duke Nicholas on Horseback

Membership

Mykola Samokysh had been a member of the Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts (today Ilya Repin St. Petersburg State Academic Institute for Painting, Sculpture and Architecture) since 1890.

• Ilya Repin St. Petersburg State Academic Institute for Painting, Sculpture and Architecture , Russian Federation

  1890

Personality

Mykola Samokysh was of Cossack descent.

Connections

Mykola Samokysh married the well-known book illustrator, Elena Sudkovskaya, in 1889.

Spouse:

Elena Petrovna Samokysh-Sudkovskaya

Elena Petrovna Samokysh-Sudkovskaya, née Besnard (1863-1924) was a Russian painter and illustrator.

References

• Three prints by Mykola Samokysh Book by Slavic and Baltic Div.
  2001