Sepia Portrait of Lukian Aleksieiev by Shevchenko (“Portrait of an Unknown Man with Guitar”): Revision of Ascription

Abstract

The paper refutes an ascription accepted in the current Complete Collection of Shevchenko’s Works for the sepia drawing that was formerly known as a “Portrait of an Unknown Man with Guitar”. It was supposed to be a portrait of Lukian Aleksieiev dated 1856–1857. The paper’s author points out that the age of the portrayed man (25–30 years old) does not correspond to L. Aleksieiev’s age at the time (16–18 years old). The inscription ‘Raim’, which H. Palamarchuk treats as not made by the artist himself, is considered undoubtedly as Shevchenko’s plot forming component of the work. The portrayed man is dressed in a double-breasted frock coat with a straight stand collar (neither skewed nor rounded) belonging to the period of Nikolai I, who died in 1855. Frock coats were abolished by Military Minister’s order on March 15, 1855; instead of them since January 1856 a half-kaftan with a rounded stand collar was introduced. This leads to the conclusion that a portrayed military officer is dressed in a uniform that was in use until 1855.
 The paper supports and develops observations of V. Smilianska and other researchers that the sepia drawing depicts a staff captain Aleksei Maksheiev, a representative of the Military Ministry in the Aral describing expedition, and accordingly, the work is dated by the year 1848. The following hypothesis is offered: Starting to draw A. Maksheiev’s portrait from nature, Shevchenko finished it after the staff captain’s departure for Orenburg and signed it at the place of completion ‘Raim’. Later Shevchenko took the sepia drawing to the Novopetrovsk fortification, to which in 1856 a young graduate of the Nepluiev Cadet Corps, a sergeant of Ural Cossack 200-man detachment L. Aleksieiev was sent for the service. He made friends with the poet. Leaving his exile place in August 1857, in memory of their common stay in the fortification, Shevchenko decided to present the young man with some of his drawings, namely two landscapes with the fortress and A. Maksheiev’s portrait, having crossed the inscription ‘Raim’ with a pencil. For L. Aleksieiev this had to be primarily a work by a well-known artist, a famous poet, while the personality of an unknown military officer might be no so important.