Portrait of Historian M. Kostomarov

Ge's portrait of the historian Mykola Kostomarov (1817–1885), undated and now in the Borys Voznytskyi Lviv National Art Gallery, depicts one of the most important figures in Ukrainian and Russian historiography. Kostomarov was a professor and member of the Brotherhood of Saints Cyril and Methodius, a Ukrainian cultural organisation that advocated for Slavic unity and Ukrainian autonomy; he was exiled to Saratov for several years for this association. As a historian he emphasised popular and ethnic history over dynastic and state-centred narratives, aligning him with the progressive intellectual circles in which Ge moved. Ge's portraits of Russian and Ukrainian intellectuals form a collective document of the reform-minded milieu of the 1860s–1880s, and Kostomarov's presence in this gallery places the portrait within an appropriate Ukrainian cultural context.

Oil on canvas, the intellectual portrait prioritises character over formal setting. Ge's direct, unheroic approach to portraiture — no symbolic accessories, no flattering light, no distinguished background — is well suited to a historian whose reputation rested on scholarly achievement rather than social rank. The face and eyes carry the portrait's psychological weight, handled with the careful observation Ge brought to all his intellectuals' faces.