The April painting on my Women Reading calendar (see also 1st of each month this year) is Maria Konstantinovna Bashkirtseva's At A Book. Bashkirtseva was Ukrainian, and lived between 1858-84, dying young of tuberculosis. Apart from her painting, she also wrote a journal about being a woman artist, called I Am the Most Interesting Book Of All. The painting is presumably, therefore, to be dated to the late 1870s or early 1880s.
Luckily, I am as much of an expert on Ukrainian literature as I am on Danish, so I am able to suggest that she is reading the first real novel in Ukrainian, written in 1845–6, which was Chorna rada by Panteleimon Kulish (The Black Council - 1846, a bit before the picture), a historical novel influenced by Sir Walter Scott, on the subject of the Cossack past. But other ideas are welcome!
What an excellent suggestion - Gogol was of course from the Ukraine, though Russians and Ukrainians argue over him to this day.
Posted by: Lindsay | Thursday, 02 April 2009 at 08:12 PM
I think she'd be reading Gogol, especially fitting as it's the 200th anniversary of his birthday today.
Posted by: adevotedreader | Thursday, 02 April 2009 at 02:08 PM