Yaroshenko, Mykola

Yaroshenko, Mykola (Nikolai) [Jarošenko], b 13 December 1846 in Poltava, Poltava gubernia, d 7 July 1898 in Kislovodsk, Subcaucasia, Russian Empire. Painter. He audited courses at the Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts (1867–74) and became a leading member of the Peredvizhniki society (from 1876). His genre paintings, such as Stoker (1878), Prisoner (1878), Student (1881), Life Is Everywhere (1888), and Peasant Girl (1891), depict social problems. He produced genre paintings, portraits of famous Russians, and many Caucasian landscapes (such as Mt. Elbrus Covered by Clouds, 1894). While staying in Poltava in 1865 and 1876 and Kyiv in 1874, 1876, and 1878–9, he painted genre scenes, such as Blind Cripples near Kyiv (1879) and Beggars at the Kievan Cave Monastery (1879–80). His Village Choir (1894) is also a Ukrainian genre scene, and his Student (1881) depicts a Ukrainian, Pylyp Chyrko. Many of his works were bequeathed to the Poltava Art Museum. Books about Yaroshenko have been written, in Russian, by V. Prytkov (1960), V. Porudominsky (1979), and I. Polenova (1983).

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 5 (1993).]