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Volodymyr Orlovskyi was one of the most outstanding landscape painters of the second half of the 19th century. His contemporaries called him “a star of the first magnitude on a par with Aivazovskyi,” “a seeker of sunlight,” and “an incomparable celebrator of southern nature.”
He was born in Kyiv on January 20 (February 1), 1842. He received his early art education at the 2nd Kyiv Gymnasium under the artist and teacher Ivan Soshenko. Later, with the support of Taras Shevchenko, he enrolled in and graduated from the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts in 1868 (becoming an academician in 1874 and a professor in 1878).
He participated in the activities of Mykola Murashko’s drawing school and was one of the founders of the Kyiv Art School. After graduating from the Academy, he studied modern art in France, where he became closely acquainted with the work of the masters of the so-called Barbizon School, and it is he who can be considered the pioneer of the Barbizon style in Ukrainian landscape painting.
After returning from France, he has lived permanently in Kyiv since 1886. Orlovsky’s former private estate is located at No. 28 on Gogol Street. He participates in exhibitions of Kyiv artists, and his exhibitions abroad are highly successful. His great contribution lies in the fact that, having absorbed the experience of the Barbizon School, he was one of the first among Ukrainian artists to begin developing the theme of the Ukrainian national landscape.
In 1914, while staying in Genoa, Italy, he died suddenly. The coffin containing the artist’s body was transported to Kyiv and buried at Lukyanivskyi Cemetery (plot No. 17, row 1, grave 29).
