Vasily Vereshchagin

Vasily Vereshchagin One of the great Russian masters that I feel is completely overlooked today is Vasily Vereshchagin (1842–1904). Perhaps the reason for this oversight is that he spent the majority of his career painting war scenes, many so grotesque that the public rejected them. Aside from these gruesome reminders of war, Vereshchagin painted many master works depicting the people and landscape of the Orient. He was hugely successful not only in Russia but throughout Europe and is considered one of the great master painters in the style of Orientalism. Vereshchagin won worldwide fame taking part in more than thirty solo exhibitions in the last decade of his life, often exhibiting in the most fashionable salons. In addition to his paintings he created documentary ethnographic drawings and was the author of a number of literary works.

Vereshchagin’s destiny with the military began in 1850 when, at the age of eight, his father enrolled him in the famous Alexandrovsky Cadet Military School at Tsarskoye Selo. From 1853 to 1860 he attended the Marine Military School in St. Petersburg, graduating at the top of his class with the rank of midshipman. Beginning in 1858 Vereshchagin began attending evening drawing classes at Ivan Kramskoy’s School for the Society for the Encouragement of the Arts. Immediately after graduating from military school in 1860, he entered the Imperial Academy to become a history painter.

His father was so outraged by this that he cut all of Vereshchagin’s financial support.

In 1863 his painting, Massacre of Penelope’s Suitors by the Returning Ulysses, was awarded the small silver medal by the Academy. This medal assured him the right to work as an artist and to not be obligated to return to military service under Russian law at the time. That same year Ivan Kramskoy led a rebellion of fourteen students who were also attending the Imperial Academy. These students, who became known as the Wanderers, demanded free choice in the theme for their paintings. Vereshchagin was very influenced by their idealism and went to great extremes to keep his own work equally as authentic as theirs throughout his career. I could not find any documentation that Vereshchagin actually graduated from the Academy, but in 1874 he was appointed as professor, but declined the appointment.

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