Vereshchagin
was born on October 14, 1842, in Cherepovets, Russia into the relatively
prosperous family of a landowner.
As the son of a landowner and nobleman, Vereshchagin was expected to follow
a military or diplomatic career. At the age of eight, his parents enrolled
him in the Alexander Cadet School, an educational institution in St. Petersburg
that prepared future military officers from a very early age. Graduating
from here, he entered the Naval Academy from which he graduated with honors
in 1860. Vereshchagin was one of the ablest students in his class and looked
to be at the outset of a promising Naval career.
However, during the years of his education in the military arts, the young
man had developed a passion for art -- viewed as a "lowly" calling by his
peers. He had begun attending evening classes at the St. Petersburg Academy
of Arts as early as 1858 and, in 1860, immediately upon graduating from
the Naval Academy, enrolled full-time at the Academy of Arts.
The Academic education was based entirely on the principles of late Classicism,
which dissatisfied the young man. Despite receiving a Minor Silver Medal
for Ulysses Slaying the Suitors of Penelope, he destroyed the painting,
saying that he would not paint such nonsense any longer, and left the Academy.
The same year (1864) he entered the Academie des Beaux-Arts in Paris where
he studied under the famous Jean Leon Gerome. But in the Paris Academy,
too, classical standards and the practice of copying from the antique and
the masterpieces of the past were prevalent.
In search of new subjects Vereshchagin traveled to the Caucasus, where
he created a series of sketches and studies, devoted to the life and customs
of the local peoples. In 1867, he volunteered for service in the Russian
army in Turkestan (a region encompassing parts of present-day Kazakhstan,
Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan) and participated in
military actions against the Emir of Bukhara. For his bravery in the defense
of Samarkand he was awarded the highest military decoration of Russia:
the Order of St. George. His ‘Turkestan series,’ painted on the basis of
sketches and studies done during the war, also brought him considerable
fame and recognition in the Russian upper class. The paintings Rejoicing
and
Presenting the Trophies, in which Muslims brandish the severed heads
of the Russian soldiers, are the most famous in the series.
Many of the Central Asian works did not sit well with Vereshchagin's commanders
because of their "lack of patriotism." The painter strove to depict the
realities of the campaign as faithfully as possible, showing Russian defeats
and the often-tragic fate of Russian soldiers in graphic detail. As a result,
the painter was forced to destroy some of the works.
Soon thereafter, he left Russia for two years.
Scenes of Central Asian barbarism and death made a great impression on
the artist. Philosophical reflections on catastrophic consequences of all
war are reflected in his picture The
Apotheosis of War (1871), which shows a pyramid of skulls amidst
burnt desert, the ruins of a city in the background. On the frame the painter
wrote his dedication "to all conquerors, who were, who are, and who will
be": an unambiguous condemnation of war.
In 1877-78, Vereshchagin fought in the Russo-Turkish war on the Balkan
Peninsula. Though opposed to war, he felt that it was his duty to document
it in all its detail, and since the profession of war correspondent had
not yet appeared, the artist got around this obstacle by volunteering for
active duty. In this position, Vereshchagin never shirked his duty and
was always in the thick of the fray. He was wounded several times. Vereshchagin
hated to see the death, often pointless, of simple soldiers, be they Russians
or Turks. Therefore he depicted both, never letting his patriotic feelings
slide to mere nationalism or chauvinism. Unlike most contemporary battle
pieces depicting war as a kind of parade, Vereshchagin’s paintings revealed
its viciousness, showing soldiers as the most important element in war
and the chief victim of it.
In the Balkan series Vereshchagin was able to show some of the Russian
commanders’ incompetence and recklessness, which resulted in a serious
conflict with the government. Alexander II said that Vereshchagin was ‘either
dirty scum, or a madman’. The painter had to leave Russia once again. He
had successful exhibitions outside Russia, but both in Europe and in the
USA, the military authorities forbade soldiers and students of military
schools to visit the exhibitions.
During his two trips to India (in 1872-74, 1882-83) he created his celebrated
Indian series, featuring a variety of subjects and techniques, from skillfully
done sketches of architectural monuments to deeply psychological portraits
and genre scenes. The subject matter of some of the paintings was the oppression
of the Indian people resulting from British colonial rule.
A journey to Syria and Palestine in 188, resulted in a set of paintings
on subjects from the New Testament, which Vereshchagin treated rather unconventionally.
The series was severely censored in Catholic countries and banned in Russia.
At an exhibition in Vienna, a religious fanatic splashed acid and ruined
two paintings: The Holy Family and The Resurrection.
It was not until the early-1890s that Vereshchagin was at last able to
return to Russia. The painter settled in Moscow where he dedicated what
would turn out to be the last 15 years of his life to a series of paintings
devoted to Napoleon’s unsuccessful Russian campaign and the War of 1812.
Though executed in his harsh, realistic style, these works are much more
romanticized and patriotic than his earlier paintings.
In 1901-1903, Vereshchagin traveled to the Philippines, USA, Cuba, and
Japan. His work on his Japan series was interrupted by the outbreak of
the Russo-Japanese war.
A partisan of peace, Vereshchagin died the death of a soldier. He perished
aboard the Russian flagship Petropavlovsk, on April 13, 1904, when
it hit a mine and sank, with all hands lost.
Notes
Chuguchak was once a flourishing city in Turkestan with beautiful historical buildings. It was destroyed before the Russian invasion of Central Asia, in one of a series of internal conflicts. Vereshchagin made a series of paintings of Chuguchak’s ruins.
The Doors of Tamerlane is a historical picture, showing the entrance to the palace of Tamerlane in Samarkand. Tamerlane, anglicized form of Timur-i-Lang ('Lame Timur' or 'Timur the Lame') (1336-1404), was a Turkic conqueror, born in Kash near Samarkand. He waged several devastating wars, conquering Persia (1392-96) and northern India (1398), and defeating the Ottomans and the Mamlukes (1402). He died leading campaign against China. His capital, Samarkand, profited greatly from his conquests.
At the Door of a Mosque. The painter depicts the beautiful work of an unknown Muslim artist on the door, and the beggars standing before it. For Vereshchagin, this is the quintessence of life in Central Asia: the splendid wealth of the rulers and the abject poverty of the common people.
At the Fortress Walls. In April 1868, the Emir of Bukhara, who settled in Samarkand, declared Jihad or holy war against Russia. In May 1868, the Russians took Samarkand, but later, when the main forces left the city for further military actions against the Emir, the garrison of Samarkand was besieged in its fortress by the army of the Khan of Shakhisabsk, as well as the native people of Samarkand, who were hostile to the Russians. The garrison was outnumbered eighty to one, but refused to surrender. The picture shows an episode from the defense of Samarkand fortress.
The five pictures Wounded, In the Hospital, Letter to Mother, Interrupted Letter, Letter Remains Unfinished tell the story of an American soldier in the Philippines, an everyday and common episode of war.
The Taj Mahal in Agra (built in 1632-48) is one of the most famous and beautiful examples of Islamic architecture. It is a mausoleum, built by a Mughal ruler of India, Shah Jahan, as a memorial to his wife.
Bibliography:
Vereshchagin by A. Lebedev & A. Solodovnikov. Russian Painters
of the XIX Century. Moscow. 1987.