His father , was a priest, poet and member of the
Regional Diet. He began his education in
Buchach, then completed it in
Lviv. From 1858 to 1863, he attended the
Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna, where he studied under the Polish painter,
Artur Grottger. While there, he was influenced by the works of
Józef Bohdan Zaleski and his political views were altered from
Pan-Slavism to Ukrainian patriotism. He published his first poems in 1861. He became one of the first members of
Prosvita, a Ukrainian nationalist organization, in 1868. After 1872, he lived in
Kyiv, where he began writing poems on folklore themes that were published in several journals devoted to the Ukrainian arts. He also wrote articles about the art of
Galicia. From 1873 to 1874, he lived in what is now
Chortkiv Raion, with the family of , painting portraits and landscapes. His first icon was for a church in
Kolomyia, which he worked on for two years. He was one of the first Ukrainian artists to portray
Taras Shevchenko. From 1882 to 1883, he edited and illustrated a satirical magazine called
The Mirror. His political cartoons were praised by
Ivan Franko. For a time, he worked as a scriptwriter and set designer for the
Ukrainian Discourse Theatre. Over the course of his career, he created icons and murals for over fifty churches and painted approximately forty portraits. He died in 1903, while painting an
iconostasis in a small village, and was buried there. A monument to him has been erected near his birthplace, with a sculpture by . Most of his works were preserved at the
Lviv National Art Gallery. In 1991, a branch of the museum devoted to his work was opened near the monument. == References ==