Vasily Vereshchagin

By the late 19th century, Vereshchagin had gained popularity, not only in Russia, but also abroad and his name never left the pages of the European and American press. From his earliest works, unlike most contemporary battle pieces depicting war as a kind of parade, Vereshchagin graphically depicted the horrors of war. "I loved the sun all my life, and wanted to paint sunshine. When I happened to see warfare and say what I thought about it, I rejoiced that I would be able to devote myself to the sun once again. But the fury of war continued to pursue me". Vereshchagin wrote. One day, in 1882, Vereshchagin's exhibition in Berlin was visited by German field marshal Helmuth von Moltke the Elder. Vereshchagin brought Moltke to his painting The Apotheosis of War. The picture evoked a sort of confusion in the field marshal. After his visit to the exhibition, Moltke issued an order forbidding German soldiers to visit it. The Austrian war minister did the same. He also declined the artist's offer to let Austrian officers see his pictures free of charge at the 1881 exhibition in Vienna.^{[citation needed]}

In Russia, a ban on exhibitions of Vereshchagin's work was also enforced, as well as a ban on reproductions of them in books and periodicals amidst accusations of slandering the Russian army. The artist took these unjust accusations badly and burned three of his paintings, The Forgotten Soldier, They Have Encircled, and Pursue and They Entered.^{[citation needed]}

A journey in Syria and Palestine in 1884 furnished him with an equally discussed set of subjects from the New Testament.^[2] Vereshchagin's paintings caused controversy over his portrayal of the figure of Christ with what was thought at the time to be an unseemly realism. His depiction of Jesus's features was thought to be excessively vulgar and over-emphatically Semitic in ethnicity.^{[citation needed]}

The "1812" series on

Last years

Vereshchagin was in the Far East during the

• The town of
  Lyudmila Zhuravlyova in 1978.^[10]
• Vereshchagin Street in Cherepovets is named after Vasily Vereshchagin, also there are a historic house museum and a monument to Vereshchagin in Cherepovets.
• He is a distant relative of the Czech rock singer Aleš Brichta. The Apotheosis of War was used by Czech heavy metal band Arakain as the cover art for the album Farao.

Gallery

• Napoleon. 1812
• 
  Napoleon near Borodino
• 
  The end of Borodino battle
• 
  Before Moscow waiting for the Boyars' Deputation
• 
  In Defeated Moscow
• 
  Through the fire
• 
  In Petrovsky Palace (Waiting for peace)
• 
  Vereshchagin with his wife Lydia and son Vasily at the In Petrovsky Palace painting. 1895–1896
• 
  Napoleon and general Lauriston (Peace at all costs!)
• 
  On the high road. Retreat, flight
• 
  Fix Bayonets! Hooray! Hooray! (the Battle of Krasnoi^[11])
• 
  Night Bivouac of Great Army

• Balkan series
• 
  Victors
• 
  Before the attack. At Plevna
• 
  After the Attack
• 
  The battlefield at Shipka (Skobelev at Shipka)
• 
  Defeated. Requiem
• 
  The Spy
• 
  Picket on the Danube
• 
  Two hawks (Bashi-bazouk)
• 
  In a Turkish mortuary

• Other works
• 
  The Moscow Cathedrals and

  river Moskva

  (in the spring)
• 
  Sher-Dor Madrasa on Registan Square in Samarkand
• 
  Japanese woman
• 
  Portrait of Nadezhda Pavlovna Bogolyubova, Alexey Bogolyubov's wife

See also

• List of Orientalist artists
• Orientalism

Further reading

• Verestchagin, Vassili (1887). Vassili Verestchagin, Painter, soldier, Traveler; Autobiographical Sketches. Vol. 1. Translated by Peters, F. H. London: Richard Bentley & Son. Retrieved 14 August 2018 – via Internet Archive.; Verestchagin, Vassili (1887). Vassili Verestchagin, Painter, soldier, Traveler; Autobiographical Sketches. Vol. 2. Translated by Peters, F. H. London: Richard Bentley & Son. Retrieved 14 August 2018 – via Internet Archive.
• Verestchagin, Vassili (1889–1890). Realism. Translated by Mrs. MacGahan. Special Exhibition; Inter-state Industrial Exposition of Chicago. Retrieved 14 August 2018 – via Internet Archive.
• Verestchagin, Vassili (1899). "1812" Napoleon I in Russia; with an Introduction by R. Whiteing. London: William Heinemann. Retrieved 14 August 2018 – via Internet Archive.
• Pleshakov, Constantine. "The Tsar's Last Armada-The Epic Voyage to the Battle of Tsushima." (2002).

Notes

References

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Vereshchagin, Vassili Vassilievich". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 27 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 1021.
• ISBN 0-8108-4927-5
• Leonard D. Abbott, "Verestchagin, Painter of War." The Comrade (New York), vol. 1, no. 7 (April 1902), pp. 155–156.
• Art Institute of Chicago, Works of Vassili Verestchagin: an Illustrated, descriptive catalogue and two appendixes to the catalogue Realism and Progress in Art by Verestchagin.
• W. T. Stead, "Vassili Verestchagin: Character Sketch," Review of Reviews (London), vol. 19 (January 1899), frontispiece, 22–33.
• Maria Chernysheva, "The Russian Gérôme? Vereshchagin as a Painter of Turkestan," RIHA Journal, September 2014.

External links

• Media related to Vasily Vereshchagin at Wikimedia Commons
• Vereshchagin page at Olga's Gallery
• Vasily Vereshchagin: horrors of war through artist’s eyes
• Vereshchagin's lost paintings Archived 2008-12-08 at the Wayback Machine
• Works by Vasily Vereshchagin at Project Gutenberg
• Artworks by or after Vasily Vereshchagin at the Art UK site