17 Facts About Vasily Vereshchagin

Vasily Vasilyevich Vereshchagin was a Russian painter, war artist, and traveller.

Vasily Vereshchagin's father was a landowner of noble birth, while his mother was of common origin and had Tatar roots.

Vasily Vereshchagin served on the frigate Kamchatka, which sailed to Denmark, France, and Egypt.

Vasily Vereshchagin graduated first in his list at the naval school, but left the service immediately to begin the study of drawing in earnest.

Vasily Vereshchagin was an indefatigable traveller, returning to St Petersburg in late 1868, to Paris in 1869, back to St Petersburg later in the year, and then back to Turkestan via Siberia at the end of 1869.

In 1871, Vasily Vereshchagin established an atelier in Munich, German Empire.

Vasily Vereshchagin gave a solo exhibition of his works at the Crystal Palace in London, United Kingdom in 1873.

Vasily Vereshchagin gave another exhibition of his works in St Petersburg in 1874, where two of his paintings, namely, The Apotheosis of War, dedicated "to all conquerors, past, present and to come," and Left Behind, the picture of a dying soldier deserted by his fellows, were denied a showing on the grounds that they portrayed the Russian military in a poor light.

In late 1874, Vasily Vereshchagin departed in Northern and Eastern Asia for an extensive tour of the Himalayas, British India, Mongolia, and Tibet, spending over two years in travel.

Vasily Vereshchagin was present at the crossing of the Shipka Pass and at the siege of Plevna, where his brother was killed.

Vasily Vereshchagin was dangerously wounded during the preparations for the crossing of the Danube near Rustchuk.

Vasily Vereshchagin painted several scenes of imperial rule in British India.

Vasily Vereshchagin aroused much controversy by his series of three pictures: firstly, of a Roman execution ; secondly, Suppression of the Indian Revolt by the English; and, thirdly, of the execution of Nihilists in St Petersburg.

Vasily Vereshchagin's detractors argued that such executions had only occurred in the Indian Rebellion of 1857, but the painting depicted modern soldiers of the 1880s, implying that the practice was then current.

In 1887, Vasily Vereshchagin defended himself in The Magazine of Art by saying that if there were another rebellion then the British would use this method again.

Vasily 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.

The 1812 series on Napoleon's Russian campaign, on which Vasily Vereshchagin wrote a book, seems to have been inspired by Tolstoi's War and Peace, and was painted in 1893 in Moscow, where the artist eventually settled.