Mykola Samokysh

Mykola Semyonovich Samokysh (Ukrainian: Микола Семенович Самокиш; 25 October 1860, Nizhyn - 18 January 1944, Simferopol) was a Ukrainian painter and illustrator who specialized in military art and animal painting. He was a recipient of the Stalin Prize in 1941.

His father was a postman; probably of Hungarian ancestry. He spent his youth in Nosivka with the family of his maternal grandfather, who was a Cossack. Later, he graduated from what is now the Nizhyn Gogol State University. His first attempt to enroll at the Imperial Academy of Arts was unsuccessful, but he gained an endorsement from an associate of Professor Bogdan Willewalde, was admitted, and studied there from 1879 to 1885 with Mikhail Clodt and Valery Jacobi as well as Willewalde, and won several awards. His painting "Прогулка" (the Walk) was bought by Pavel Tretyakov.

From 1885 to 1888, he studied in Paris with Edouard Detaille. When he returned, he and Franz Roubaud travelled to the Caucasus to create some large works for a panorama at the military history museum of Tbilisi. In 1889, he married the well-known book illustrator, Elena Sudkovskaya. The following year, he was named an Academician. From 1894 to 1918, he taught at the Academy, where he became a Professor in 1913.

In 1904, on behalf of the magazine Niva, he travelled to the front during the Russo-Japanese War and produced an album of paintings. In 1915, he and some of his students at the Academy formed an "Art Squad" and went to the Eastern Front to make sketches. During the Russian Revolution, he became separated from his wife. She went to Paris and apparently died there in 1924, although some sources say she returned to Russia and died in Vyborg.

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