Ustyianovych, Kornylo

Ustyianovych, Kornylo [Устиянович, Корнило; Ustyjanovyč], b 1839 in Vovkiv, Lviv district, Galicia, d 22 July 1903 in Dovhe, Stryi county, Galicia. Painter, writer, and journalist; son of Mykola Ustyianovych; founding member of the Shevchenko Society (1873). After studying at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts (1858–63) he worked in Vienna and throughout Galicia and Bukovyna, where he painted icons for over 50 churches, 15 iconostases, 11 church murals, and 7 religious canvases, including Christ before Pilate (1880), in Vienna; Moses (1887), in the Transfiguration Church in Lviv; and Baptism of Rus’, Christ in the Desert, Volodymyr the Great, and Saint Olha, in the Vistova village church, near Kalush. Among his 40 portraits are ones of M. Ustyianovych, Stepan Kachala (1871), Porfyrii Bazhansky, Yuliian Lavrivsky (1887), and Anatol Vakhnianyn (1895). He also did paintings on historical themes, such as Prince Vasylko of Terebovlia (1866), Shevchenko in Exile (1880), Nestor the Chronicler (1901), Yaroslavna's Lament, Cossack Battle (1890), and Hetman Ivan Mazepa at a Dnipro Crossing (1903); ethnographic paintings, such as Boiko Couple and Hutsul; and a few landscapes, such as The Black Sea, Sunset, and Morning. His portrait drawings of Galician princes were printed in the journal Pryiatel’ ditei (1881–3). Ustyianovych's works conform to the principles of academism but reveal a romantic bent.

Ustyianovych's first poems were written in yazychiie and published in 1861. During his studies in Vienna he evolved from a Pan-Slavist into a Ukrainian populist. From 1872 he contributed articles, humorous feuilletons, accounts of his travels, and several stories in the Ukrainian vernacular to Galician periodicals, such as Halychanyn (1867–70), Slovo (Lviv), Zoria (Lviv), Dilo, Ruslan, the journal Pravda, and newspaper Osnova. . In the 1870s he published his historical poems ‘Iskorosten’,’ ‘Vadym,’ and ‘Sviatoslav Khorobryi’ (Sviatoslav the Brave). He worked as a scenery designer for the Ruska Besida Theater in Lviv, and his tragedies Iaropolk I Sviatoslavych (1877) and Oleh Sviatoslavych (1876) were performed there (1878, 1883). In 1882–3 he edited and illustrated the satirical magazines Zerkalo and Nove zerkalo. Three volumes of his writings were published in 1875–7, and his memoirs about Mikhail Raevsky and Russian Pan-Slavism appeared in 1884. A book about Ustyianovych by Yaroslav Nanovsky was published in Kyiv in 1963.

[This article was updated in 2019.]