When Taras Shevchenko visited the remote monastery of Hustyn in 1845, he was not only an artist but also a member of the Kyiv Archaeographic Commission, charged with documenting Ukraine’s ancient monuments. His sketch of the Church of Peter and Paul, later developed into the work In Hustyn: Church of Peter and Paul, stands as one of the earliest visual records of this remarkable wooden church, which would later be lost to fire in the 20th century. The drawing is thus a rare witness to a vanished architectural heritage, capturing a structure that survives today only in Shevchenko’s hand. The scene unfolds on a quiet day, with the church’s tiered domes rising above the gentle slope and a scattering of trees.

Shevchenko selects a vantage point that emphasizes the church’s harmonious proportions and the intricate carpentry of its wooden walls, highlighting the craftsmanship of Ukrainian baroque architecture. A solitary figure, perhaps a monk or local villager, stands near the entrance, underscoring the church’s role as both sanctuary and community center. The play of light across the shingles and the careful rendering of the surrounding landscape root the building firmly in its environment, much as Ivan Shishkin would later do with Russian forests, though Shevchenko’s focus remains on the human imprint upon the land. The precise medium of In Hustyn: Church of Peter and Paul is not documented, though Shevchenko often worked in sepia ink and watercolor during his 1845 travels.

This work is part of a celebrated series of architectural studies he created for the Commission, which are now invaluable records of Ukraine’s cultural patrimony. After Shevchenko’s death, many of these sheets entered the collection of the National Museum Taras Shevchenko in Kyiv, where they are preserved today. The drawing marks a period in Shevchenko’s career when he was as much an ethnographer as an artist, driven by a mission to rescue his country’s past from oblivion.