25 February] 1814[b] in the village of Moryntsi, Kiev Governorate, Russian Empire,[6] about 20 years after the third partition of Poland wherein the territory of Ukraine where Shevchenko was born was annexed by Imperial Russia.

[14] At the age of 12, he left home to work as a student assistant and a servant for a drunkard named Bohorsky, who had replaced Sovhyr as the village precentor and teacher and was even more violent than his predecessor.

[16] At around this time, Shevchenko experienced his first love, Oksana Kovalenko [uk], as confirmed by a dedication he later wrote in the poem Mariana, the nun [uk]:[17] It is true, Oksana, alien and black-browed, That you will not remember the orphan Who, in a grey jacket, was so happy To see a wonder - your beauty, Whom you taught, without talk or words, How to speak with the eyes, soul and heart, With whom you smiled, cried, and worried, To whom you loved to sing a song about Petrus.

There is evidence that during this period of his life, Shevchenko was trained by his older brother Mykola to become a wheelwright, and that he also lived with and worked for the family of Hryhoriy Koshytsia, the Kyrylivka priest, who treated Taras well.

His servants, including Shevchenko, were later expelled from the city, forced to leave Polish territory under armed guard, and then made their way to St. Petersburg.

[23] In his novel Artist, Shevchenko described that during the pre-academical period he painted such works as Apollo Belvedere, Fraklete, Heraclitus, Architectural barelief, and Mask of Fortune.

[31] He introduced him to other compatriots, such as the writer and poet Yevhen Hrebinka, the art historian Vasyl Hryhorovych [uk], and the Russian painter Alexey Venetsianov.

He met with prominent Ukrainian writers and intellectuals Yevhen Hrebinka, Panteleimon Kulish, and Mykhaylo Maksymovych, and was befriended by the princely Repnin family, especially Varvara.

[citation needed] In 1844, distressed by the condition of Ukrainian regions in the Russian Empire, Shevchenko decided to capture some of his homeland's historical ruins and cultural monuments in an album of etchings, which he called Picturesque Ukraine.

In the autumn of 1842, Shevchenko planned a sea trip to Sweden and Denmark, but due to illness, he returned home after reaching Revel (modern Tallinn).

[38] In May 1843, Shevchenko travelled to Ukraine, where he met as many intellectuals, poets, and artists as possible, including the future Brotherhood of Saints Cyril and Methodius member Vasyl Bilozersky.

[44] In October 1843, he wrote his poem "The Dug Grave [uk]", after visiting recent excavations of burial mounds that many Ukrainians considered to be symbolic of the heroic past of the Cossacks.

The Society for the Encouragement of Artists gave him 300 rubles to help produce Picturesque Ukraine,[46] but due to his poor planning and lack of business skills, few of the intended etchings with their accompanying text were published, and not enough money was generated from sales to fulfill his dream of buying his siblings' freedom.

Shevchenko had mocked her frumpy appearance and facial tics, which she had developed fearing the Decembrist uprising and its plans to kill her family.

[48] While under investigation, Shevchenko was imprisoned in Saint Petersburg in casemates of the 3rd Department of Imperial Chancellery on Panteleimonovskaya Street (today Pestelia str., 9).

[citation needed] The following year, 1848, he was assigned to undertake the first Russian naval expedition of the Aral Sea on the ship "Konstantin", under the command of Lieutenant Butakov.

Nevertheless, he created many unique works of art about the Aral Sea nature and Kazakhstan people at a time when Russian conquest of Central Asia had begun in the middle of the nineteenth century.

In 1851, at the suggestion of fellow serviceman Bronisław Zaleski, lieutenant colonel Mayevsky assigned him to the Mangyshlak (Karatau) geological expedition.

[60] However, fulfilling Shevchenko's wish, expressed in his poem "Testament" ("Zapovit"), to be buried in Ukraine, his friends arranged the transfer of his remains by train to Moscow and then by horse-drawn wagon to his homeland.

When I die, then make my grave High on an ancient mound, In my own beloved Ukraine, In steppeland without bound: Whence one may see wide-skirted wheatland, Dnipro's steep-cliffed shore, There whence one may hear the blustering River wildly roar.

When I am dead, bury me In my beloved Ukraine, My tomb upon a grave mound high Amid the spreading plain, So that the fields, the boundless steppes, The Dnieper's plunging shore My eyes could see, my ears could hear The mighty river roar.

Translated by John Weir,[62] Toronto, 1961 Shevchenko is considered to be "the founder of the revolutionary democratic trend in the history of Ukrainian social thought"[63] and a utopian socialist.

His political, aesthetic and philosophical worldview was formed under the influence of the ideas of Russian revolutionary democrats such as Herzen, Belinsky, Dobrolyubov and Chernyshevsky; his views reflected the interests of the Ukrainian peasantry of the mid-19th century, the era of the crisis of the feudal-serf system in Imperial Russia.

Critical of the historical Polish attitude to Ukrainians in his early poems, later in his life Shevchenko started calling his compatriots for solidarity with Poles in their fight against the Tsarist regime.

"[68] Shevchenko was one of the most active participants in a secret political organization in Ukraine, the Brotherhood of Saints Cyril and Methodius and headed the revolutionary nucleus in it.

In his poem, "The Heretic", Shevchenko praised the struggle of Jan Hus (an early 15th-century Bohemian religious reformer) for the interests of ordinary people and the unity of the Slavs.

Shevchenko strove for art that is both national (folkloric) and realistic, and for that he earned the praise of Chernyshevsky[71] and the Russian itinerant painter Ivan Kramskoi, who drew the poet's famous portrait after his death.

Shevchenko had a great influence on the further development of revolutionary social thought in Ukraine and on Ukrainian culture in general (Ivan Franko, Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky, Lesya Ukrainka, etc.).

Shevchenko produced portraits, compositions on mythological, historical, and household themes, architectural drawings, and landscapes, using oils on canvas, watercolour, sepia, ink, and pencil, as well as etchings.

[citation needed] A great number of his pictures, drawings, and etchings preserved to this day testify to his unique artistic talent.