He had already been attracted to painting and he made several attempts to study with various local painters but his experiences were so unpleasant that he finally gave up and returned to his native village to pasture the cattle. A new attempt to get permission to study brought from the overseer of the estate merely an order to serve in the bakery but his failure there was so evident that he was appointed instead a page in the mansion. This gave him at least the opportunity to feast his eyes on the beautiful works of art that it contained and encouraged him in his early attempts to copy them. He had to do this secretly and when his master discovered his copying and painting, the boy was soundly flogged. Nevertheless Engelhardt, like many other nobles of the day, liked to have educated serfs on his estate, and since Taras seemed competent, he took the boy with him first to Vilna and then after the outbreak of the Polish revolt to St. Petersburg and apprenticed him to the painter Shirayev. Shevchenko learned relatively little here and life was very hard but he had the opportunity to make the acquaintance of the Ukrainian artist Ivan Soshenko. This was a piece of good fortune, for Soshenko soon introduced him to Karl Petrovich Bryulov, the most fashionable painter of the day. Bryulov was then at the height of his fame. He was of a French Huguenot family which had long been domiciled in Russia and had been allowed to Russianize his name, only when he received a fellowship to study in Italy in 1821. He stayed there twelve years and took the Italian capital by storm. There he painted his masterpiece, the _Last Days of Pompeii_, which encouraged Bulwer-Lytton to write his novel on that subject. He had come to know personally Sir Walter Scott and the other English authors who visited Italy. Now in 1833, back in Russia, his studio was frequented by the most fashionable people of the day. His courses at the Academy were the goal of all students and the approval of Bryulov meant success or failure for the average artist. It was this man who took an interest in the young serf and desired to have him as a student, but no serf could be admitted to the Academy. Engelhardt refused to give Shevchenko his liberty but finally offered it in return for 2500 rubles. To secure this sum Bryulov painted a portrait of the Russian poet Zhukovsky and this was sold in court circles by a lottery. The money was easily raised and on April 22, 1838, Shevchenko, then twenty-four years of age, became a free man, just one year after the death of Pushkin. He commenced his formal studies at the Academy of Art and finished the course in 1845 as a free artist.