Trutovsky, Kostiantyn

Trutovsky, Kostiantyn [Трутовський, Костянтин; Trutovs'kyj, Kostjantyn], b 9 February 1826 in Kursk, Russian Empire, d 29 March 1893 in Yakovlevka, Kursk gubernia. Ukrainian painter and graphic artist. He was raised on his family’s estate in Popivka, Okhtyrka county, Kharkiv gubernia. He audited classes at the Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts (1845–9) and in 1860 was elected a member of the academy. Having adopted the prevailing realist style of academism, he specialized in genre paintings depicting life in Kursk gubernia and Ukraine. They include Woman with Homespun Cloth (1850s), Carolers in Ukraine (1864), Kobzar on the Dnipro (depicting Taras Shevchenko, 1875), On a Moonlit Night (1881), and The Sick One (1883). Trutovsky also did hundreds of pencil drawings and illustrations. Russkii khudozhestvennyi listok printed his illustrations to Marko Vovchok’s stories in 1860. Other illustrations were published in Zhivopisnaia Ukraina (1861–2) and an album of lithographs illustrating Nikolai Gogol’s Vechera na khutore bliz Dikanki (Evenings on a Farm near Dykanka, 1874–6). He also did illustrations to Vovchok’s stories ‘Sestra’ (Sister) and ‘Chumak’ (1860), Taras Shevchenko’s poems ‘Haidamaky’ (Haidamakas, 1886), ‘Naimychka’ (The Hired Girl), and ‘Nevol'nyk’ (The Captive, 1887), N. Gogol’s stories ‘Sorochinskaia iarmarka’ (Sorochyntsi Fair) and ‘Vecher nakanune Ivana Kupala’ (Saint John’s Eve, 1876), and Ivan Krylov’s fables. Most of his works were within the framework of the ethnographic sentimental style fashionable at the time; some, however, touched on painful social problems. Trutovsky influenced younger painters, such as Serhii Vasylkivsky, Ivan Izhakevych, Mykola Pymonenko, and Opanas Slastion. Books about him by A. Artiukhova (1931), Liudmyla Miliaieva (1955), A. Vereshchagina (1955), and Z. Lashkul (1974) have appeared.

Sviatoslav Hordynsky

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