Hristo Tsokev (1847 – 1883) was one of the first gifted and well-educated Bulgarian artists from the Pre-liberation Era. He was also the first Gabrovian artist to acquire a specialized education. The historiographer Dr. Petar Tsonchev, with his book “From the Social and Cultural Past of Gabrovo” (1934), was one of those researchers that first turned their attention to the figure and work of this significant but forgotten painter of the Bulgarian Revival. Before that he was noticed by “the cultured Gabrovians” – the secondary school teacher and colleague of his Nikola Golosmanov (in a letter from 1917 containing biographical notes on the artist) and the cellarer Stefan Stanimirov. It was not until the First World War that a small collection of his earliest works found itself at the National Archeological Museum in Sofia. In 1923 his works and some biographical notes about his life were published for the first time by Alexander Protich. At the Grand Jubilee Exhibition “100 Years of Bulgarian Art”, held in 1935 in Sofia, Hristo Tsokev was first introduced to the Bulgarian public in the capital with an original work of his. The first researcher to speak seriously about his work was the renowned scholar, historian and art critic Nikola Mavrodinov in “The New Bulgarian Painting” and “The Art of the Bulgarian Revival”. Further interest was inspired by two in-depth studies by Asen Vasilev – “Revival Artists” (1956) and “Revival Masters” (1965) and a study by Tsanko Lavrenov titled “New Data on the Revival Artist Hristo Tsokev” (1956). His work was praised in Mara Tsoncheva’s “The Bulgarian Revival – Painting and Graphic Art” (1962), in which she examined him in all the genres he worked within (life painting, landscape, historical multi-figure composition, free and applied graphics) and other works. In 1973 Vera Dinova-Ruseva published her monograph “Hristo Tsokev” which, accompanied by rich illustrative material, clarified many details about his personal and professional life.
Hristo Tsokev was the second son of Hristo Ivanov Bankov – a bright craftsman from an old family – a maker of “eminii” (slippers) from the Tsokyuvtsi huts in the Gabrovo region. His grandfather owned land and a house in Tryavna but when in 1798 groups of “kurdzhalii” and “daalii” (highwaymen) attacked and set fire to his village, he, alongside many other people from Tryavna, had to flee to Gabrovo. The huts are named after his family – Tsokyuvtsi. This old family from Tryavna may have been one of priests and icon-painters if we judge by the sons’ inclinations. As a child, Hristo received his primary education at the Mount Athos Gabrovian Convent (next to the Palauzov School in the Sixth District neighborhood) and proceeded to request of his father to continue his education. In the spring of 1859 the young boy left for Mount Athos with a Hilendarian mendicant friar (a monk who collects money for the monastery) and some Gabrovian pilgrims. The only way to satisfy the boy’s thirst for knowledge and art education was for his father to agree to send the poor, young boy to become a monk. Up to 1860 he was a catechumen in the Hilendar monastery, where Paisii Hilendarski, Ilarion Makriopolski, Neofit Bozveli and other Bulgarian enlighteners had lived and dreamed of a liberated Bulgaria. During this time many Bulgarian icon-painters worked at the Mount Athos monasteries. The boy’s rare talent – painting – was stimulated by the monastery abbot who, using the annual travels of Hilendarian messengers who collected aid for the monastery, sent him to get an art education in Russia. Both at the Hilendar Monastery and the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra, where he stayed for seven years, he studied icon-painting. Here he was declared monk Charalambos (he became a monk at 16/17 years of age).
The monk artist’s freedom-loving spirit made his life under the Kyiv-Pechersk Order strenuously difficult, so he left the Lavra voluntarily, went to Moscow, abandoned the monk lifestyle and started studying secular painting at the School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. What striking similarities with the life of Levski (Bulgarian national hero). Vasil Levski abandoned the monk lifestyle to become a revolutionary and Hristo Tsokev did it in order to become a painter to whom the efforts for liberation were not alien either. They both had the same aim – to serve their enslaved Homeland in the name of liberty. At the Moscow School Hristo Tsokev very clearly revealed his talent for painting portraits. He was a scholarship student at the Slavic Charity Committee in Moscow, and he was also aided by the Bulgarian Board of Trustees in Odessa at times. In 1873 he sent a request to the council of the Moscow School which said: “I have the intention of entering the newly opened school in Gabrovo as a teacher of drawing and painting. I implore that the Council recognize me as a free artist”.
Upon his return to Gabrovo, Hristo Tsokev did not start working at the Main Class School (the Secondary School) immediately, as the position for a drawing teacher had not been announced yet. He worked as a “free artist”. Despite the difficult material and creative circumstances, he painted many portraits for churches and monasteries in Gabrovo, Svishtov and Gorna Oryahovitsa. He painted an entire collection of the faces of prominent Gabrovian teachers (the priest Vasil Mihov), tradesmen (Illiya Vidinliev, Petko Manafov, Tsanko Dobrev), craftsmen, their fathers, mothers (Raycho Karolev’s), wives (his own wife Kichka Bedrozova), children (Mariyka Videnlieva, Mariyka Dobreva) and others. Vera Dinova-Ruseva remarks that “In less than ten years he found his element as an artist. Having found himself in his homeland, faced with the strictly ethical people of the Bulgarian Revival, and surrounded only by religious paintings which adhered to Bulgarian traditions, he carved out his own style. The poses in some of his portraits are reminiscent of the Ktitor figures on the church walls. Hristo Tsokev’s main interest was the face of the person he was painting, which reflected both personal and societal characteristics of the Bulgarian people of that time – those qualities of enterprise, vigor, human dignity and self-consciousness which were characteristic of the era. With his graphic art and drawings reflecting the suffering of the oppressed by slavery Bulgarians, Hristo Tsokev – adds Vera Dinova-Ruseva – assumed the role of an active fighter for national self-consciousness and identity, just like a true romantic revolutionary.
In the fall of 1879 his dream of becoming a teacher at the Secondary School came true. His homeland was free. One of the first art teachers in Bulgaria was now able to display his pedagogical abilities.
N. Golosmanov remarks that “One should have seen with their own eyes the diligence with which Tsokev worked with his young pupils…in order to understand his love for painting and his desire to spark in his young fellow countrymen the same love for this noble art form”. He was a class teacher to 31 students in the school year 1881/1882 and according to his pupils he was a very democratic, upright teacher who stood out with his responsiveness to the students’ personal troubles. Then, a severe cold worsened his already present tuberculosis. In 1883 he took part in a competition for the teacher position at a school in the capital (Sofia), which he won with an original work of his. However, his rapidly progressing illness impeded his moving to Sofia. Having just turned 36, he died in Gabrovo. In 1883 the “Educational Newspaper” magazine wrote “[He was] one of the best teachers at the State Secondary School in Gabrovo, which lost one of its most merited teachers, in the town of Gabrovo, which lost one of its best citizens, who in a short time had managed to win the love of all his fellow townsmen, and in Bulgaria, which lost of its most talented children.
Today, Hristo Tsokev’s works are part of the golden fund at the National Art Gallery. Six portraits of Gabrovians are in the 50-year-old Gabrovian Gallery, which started as an art department at the Historical Museum. Having gone through renovations in recent years, Hristo Tsokev Art Gallery in Gabrovo has turned into a prominent and attractive culture and creativity center.
Vela Lazarova
Translation by Gabriela Hristova