Shevchenko

Born into a serf family in the village of Moryntsi, of Kiev Governorate of the Russian Empire (now in Cherkasy Oblast, Ukraine. Shevchenko was orphaned at the age of eleven.[1] He was taught how to read by a village precentor, and loved to draw at every opportunity. Shevchenko served his owner Pavel Engelhardt in Vilnius (1828–1831) and then Saint Petersburg.
Engelhardt noticed Shevchenko's artistic talent, and in Saint Petersburg he apprenticed him to the painter Vasiliy Shiriaev for four years. There he met the Ukrainian artist Ivan Soshenko, who introduced him to other compatriots, such as Yevhen Hrebinka and Vasyl Hryhorovych, and to the Russian painter Alexey Venetsianov. Through these men Shevchenko also met the famous painter and professor Karl Briullov, who donated his portrait of the Russian poet Vasily Zhukovsky as a lottery prize, whose proceeds were used to buy Shevchenko's freedom on May 5, 1838.