In the thesis, which is interdisciplinary in nature, the works of painting and graphics as a source to the history of Southern Ukraine of the last quarter of the XVIIIth - the middle of the XIXth century are analyzed. It is noted that over the past 25 years foreign science has intensified the development of the problems of visual history, the interdisciplinary interaction of history and art. These questions were raised, above all, in the works of T. Mitchell, G. Pollock, N. Mirzoeff, J. Wolff, M. Bal, E. Vyshlenkova and many others. In Ukrainian science, the problems of visual history and interdisciplinary interaction between history and art are only beginning to develop. Geopolitical shifts in the last third of the XVIIIth century gave impetus to the beginning of a large-scale study of the region, the clarification of its potential. The result was the large number of expeditions organized by different departments of the Russian Empire and European privates in order to create a large-scale scientific picture of the region. These expeditions left a very interesting graphic information resource. At this time Southern Ukraine also became a "region-nature" for fine art. After the liquidation of the Crimean Khanate numerous artists visited it in the search for plots and thereby significantly "visualized" the land by their works. In addition, the vast expanses of Southern Ukraine, which had kept a large number of cultural and historical monuments belonging to different peoples and epochs, had become a very popular place among the European elite for the organization of travels. These journeys left an interesting information layer, a significant part of which are visual sources. Thus, for a short period of time, a significant, still unexplored even now complex of visual sources was formed, which contains information that is not available in written and other historical sources. This complex of sources is scattered across various museum collections, but most of them are concentrated in the State Hermitage Museum and the Russian Museum. Part of the original graphics and painting was printed with xylography, engraving and lithography. Publishing collections of historical images has no permanent scientific tradition and is likely to be an exception. Therefore, in historical research, they essentially replace the various types of guides, catalogs of museum collections, individual authors, exhibitions, etc. In the dissertation the works of painting and graphics which depict the historical reality of Southern Ukraine of the last quarter of the XVIIIth - the middle of the XIXth century were classified according to such criteria as visual language, degree of reflection of historical reality and genre features. The paper notes that the structure of the plot of works of painting and graphics of Southern Ukraine of the last quarter of the XVIIIth - the middle of the XIXth centuries was formed in three ways: direct reflection, construction and transformation. The key to understanding information contained in works of painting and graphics is their names or arthiones. Arthiones as a historical sources have their structure. The research of the structure of these sources made it possible to reveal their information potential.
