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The TAdviser article presents photographs of drawings, sketches and paintings by Vereshchagin, which were not included in the catalog of his exhibition at the Tretyakov Gallery in 2018.
Vasily Vasilyevich Vereshchagin (1842-1904) - Russian painter, writer. Thanks to the conflict plots of his realistic paintings and innovative exhibition activities, he gained the greatest international fame among domestic artists of the 19th century.
The life of Vasily Vasilyevich Vereshchagin, this extremely restless Russian artist, from the very earliest youth resembled an adventurous novel. Vereshchagin's extraordinary activity and vital energy are all the more surprising because he came from a provincial, leisurely noble environment. His father was a phlegmatic and sedentary man, his mother was distinguished by soreness and nervous character.
Vasily, who was the second child in the family, was born on October 14, 1842 in the city of Cherepovets. Until the age of seven, the artist's childhood took place in his father's estate among the free forests. At the age of seven, he was sent to the Tsarskoye Selo juvenile corps to prepare for admission to the Marine Corps, where he was safely accepted thirteen months later.
Extremely stubborn and self-loving, he got up at three or four in the morning and went to bed at midnight, studied so as not to give way to his superiority in the class, and received the highest scores in all subjects. Even then, he stood out for his proud intransigence and courage.
Here, in the Naval Corps, the future officer was unexpectedly drawn to art. It all started with the usual drawing lessons. In high school, he already attended the Drawing School of the St. Petersburg Society for the Promotion of Artists. Here he became so seriously interested in painting that for the sake of his Sunday classes he refused the honorary round-the-world swimming for the cadet. By the end of his studies in the building, he had already firmly decided that he would become an artist. In the spring of 1860, he was forever spread with the sea career and in the fall of that year, despite the categorical refusal of his parents to help him, he entered the Academy of Arts. He nevertheless did not stay at the Academy for long. The routine dead of teaching and scholastic ancient themes very quickly bored him.
1863-1865: Caucasian Series
In 1863, Vasily Vereshchagin went on a Caucasian journey. He wanted to go free, look, see with his own eyes unfamiliar, wild and still little-known edges. He lived in the Caucasus for more than a year, traveling as a free artist, making sketches and curiously observing local mores. Nogai steppes, Kalmyk nomads, Georgian and Armenian villages - that only did not pass during this time before his inquisitive gaze!
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Returning to Petersburg, he goes to Paris to continue his art education. There he converges with the famous academician Jerome and enters the French Academy of Arts. And again he does not sit still. Having worked hard for the winter in Jerome's workshop, he leaves every warm season on long trips. The craving for wanderings and a lively, unvarnished life forced him to eventually leave the Paris Academy three years later.
1867-1874: Turkestan Series
He returned to Russia and asked for artists to General K.P. Kaufman, appointed Governor-General and Commander of the Turkestan Military District. This new long journey, which 24-year-old Vereshchagin took, was full of a wide variety of dangers.
However, the most serious test awaited Vereshchagin in the troops of Kaufman. This happened in Samarkand, when the fortress, in which about six hundred Russian soldiers took refuge, surrounded the Khan's army of fifty-five thousand people. The forces were so unequal that the outcome of the battle seemed to be a foregone conclusion.
Many times Asians rushed to the gate and into the breaks of the fortress wall. Thousands and thousands of warriors stormed the besieged fortress over and over again. And the Russians had nowhere to wait for reinforcements. Already in the first two days, the garrison lost about a hundred and fifty people. Vereshchagin fought with everyone. He did not seem to know fear and always finds himself in the most dangerous and risky places. One bullet hit him with a gun, the other with a hat, someone threw a stone injured his leg. It was probably a one-of-a-kind soldier artist.
The besieged survived. Vereshchagin received the St. George Cross "For brilliant courage and courage." The result of his stay in Central Asia was a personal exhibition in St. Petersburg.
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Having arranged an exhibition in St. Petersburg and amazed the northern inhabitants with the exoticism of the far south, Vereshchagin again bursts under the scorching rays of the Turkestan sun. It seems that he is already forever poisoned by the bacillus of wanderings, and for a normal, healthy existence he must need - space, hot desert wind, new impressions, a constant feeling of danger and risk.
He roams wild places, looks into the farthest and most hidden corners and looks for adventures on his head. This time, his exotic figure with a sketch could be found on the border with China. He spent the night right in the steppe on the ground, hunted, and hungry predators approached and growled to the idols in which he rested. He probably felt like the happiest and freest person ever...
Returning from the trip, he again left Russia and settled in Munich. There, Vereshchagin comprehended his Turkestan impressions and in three years created a huge collection of paintings. These were now well-known - "Doors of Tamerlane," "Sale of a Child Slave" and a large series of paintings "Barbarians," which the artist himself called a "heroic poem." In "Barbarians" Vereshchagin, as if anticipating the emergence of cinema, tried to break away from the statics of a separate picture and showed the development of events, step by step, in time. The viewer had the opportunity, as it were, to follow the entire course of the operation frame by frame - from its beginning to its tragic completion. Vereshchagin was so fond of this method - serial writing - that later he often wrote this way.
He hired a canopy workshop in the suburbs of Munich, allowing him to write a sitter constantly lit by the sun. That is why all his large paintings made in the workshop give the impression of written from nature, so the feeling of the hot Asian sun is really conveyed in them. In general, the principle of documentary accuracy was the main thing for him. He always rushed into the very heat of events in order to disdain himself and survive all that his heroes feel and experience. He believed that the truth of life and the power of art lie in the most accurate depiction of the visible, and therefore his paintings seem to be frozen personnel of documentary chronicles. This is really a kind of documentary of the XIX century, in which everything is accurate and reliable, even a mark on the dressing gown of an Uzbek.
During the life of Vereshchagin, his paintings enjoyed great success. The artist loved and knew how to arrange his personal exhibitions, spending significant funds on this. He specially decorated the halls with burgundy velvet, skillfully illuminated paintings, including electric light, laid out collections of exotic oriental objects next to them and invited musicians to play in front of their paintings. Therefore, for spectators, wherever the artist's exhibitions take place - in London or Vienna, in St. Petersburg or Munich, they have always been significant events that brought together a lot of people.
1874-1880s: Indian Series
Having exhausted the Turkestan theme, Vereshchagin planned a new big journey. This time, his path lay in distant and mysterious India. And again, as every time, he did not sit as a tourist in a luxurious hotel, but climbed, traveled, walked and studied every piece and phenomenon in an unfamiliar country with the meticulousness of a scientist. During his two years in India, he traveled thousands of miles by train, steamboat, horse, pony, and bull, even to elephants. He had to drown, suffocate in the tropical heat, fight off wild predators, and suffer brutally from tropical fever.
Impressions of this trip were reflected in many sketches and paintings, with documentary accuracy drawing life, mores, architecture and history of India. Everything that the artist saw in this country, everything that he admired and that attracted his attention - passes before the eyes of an amazed viewer. The famous Taj Mahal mausoleum, salt transportation on yaks, glaciers, Hindu temples, mosques, an elephant procession - all this is recorded thanks to Vereshchagin's incredible meticulousness, efficiency and curiosity.
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1877-1881: Balkan Series
For the convenience of working on large canvases, the artist built a huge workshop near Paris. It consisted of two rooms: winter, 25 meters long, and round summer, rotating along the rails, in order to keep the sun lighting the artist needs for as long as possible during the day. Vereshchagin had already begun to carry out a series of large paintings of the Indian cycle he had conceived when the alarming news of the beginning of the Russian-Turkish campaign reached him. And, of course, the author of the famous "Apotheosis of War" could not sit still.
In April 1877, he went to the army, where he was assigned to the adjutants of the commander in chief, without the right to official maintenance, which gave him freedom and independence. This extremely popular liberation war of the Slavic peoples in the Balkans in those years was, perhaps, the main feat of Vereshchagin. With amazing courage, he rushes to the hottest points of the war in order, like a war correspondent, to record her real truth.
As soon as he arrived in the army, he rushed to the banks of the Danube, where the Turks fired at Romanian ships to observe shell explosions up close. But he was eager to participate in the real "business" himself. On board the destroyer "Joke" he goes to mine the channel of the Danube. The Turks fired at the minonox. Vereshchagin was wounded in the battle in the thigh, but he continued the shootout with the Turks. Finally, the minonosa got out of the battle, and the brave artist was put in a Bucharest hospital, where it soon became clear that an ill-fated bullet had brought particles of clothing into the wound and suppuration began. The provision was so serious that he had already written a will. In the end, when gangrene almost began, the doctors decided to operate, and the weakened artist went on the mend.
Having checked out, he again "flew" to where it was dangerous. With incredible meticulousness, he walked the roads of war, peering into the faces of orphaned children, slaughtered and murdered women, exhausted and wounded soldiers. Together with General Skobelev, he crossed the Balkans in winter, coolly sketched during fierce battles and entered dozens of mutilated corpses of guard heroes into his campaign album. The result of his observations and complex military experience was the famous paintings, now known to everyone. Here is his textbook "Skobelev under Shipka." The brave courageous general, who has become a friend of the artist, goes around the endless ranks of soldiers. Soldiers' hats fly into the air, shouts of "hurray!" Are heard, everyone is inspired by the joy of victory, and here - in front of the audience, frozen corpses of soldiers who have recently fallen in battle spread out in unthinkable poses.
The famous "Memorial Service..." Under a low gloomy sky, a regimental priest sings hundreds of young soldiers, whose corpses flooded a whole field. Here she is - the flip side of the victorious war. On this field, the artist himself was looking for the body of his deceased brave brother... This series of anti-war paintings, which caused undisguised irritation in Russia, was carried by the artist with great success throughout Europe.
After the end of the Balkan series, Vereshchagin once again visited India, and then Palestine. Now he has planned to create a "Trilogy of Executions" and a cycle of paintings on gospel subjects. Alas, neither in the picturesque nor in the philosophical sense, most of these paintings are of great interest.
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1887-1900: Series 1812
Vereshchagin plans to begin work on a new large series dedicated to the Patriotic War of 1812, and to this end return to Russia and settle with his family near Moscow. He sells his luxurious French workshop and builds himself a new one, near Moscow.
From now on, his new address: "Moscow. Behind the Serpukhov outpost. The village of Nizhny Kotly. " The place was very deaf and remote, but the whole character of the artist affected his choice. The very independent Vereshchagin extremely did not want to be bothered, and he specially chose a remote outskirts for himself. On the high bank of the Moscow River, he erected for himself choirs from the mighty Siberian larch.
It was here in the vast, spacious room of his winter workshop, where the floors were covered with magnificent Persian and Indian carpets, and exotic cold and firearms hung on the walls, Vereshchagin worked on his famous series, which included twenty canvases. Almost the entire history of the Napoleonic invasion, starting with the Battle of Borodino and ending with the shameful flight of the French from Russia, was reflected on an epic scale in this monumental cycle. Here Napoleon, arms crossed, peers into the unfamiliar Borodino field, but he in the Kremlin looks at the flaming Moscow. French horses in the Assumption Cathedral, bearded partisans in a beautiful winter forest.
With these patriotic works, Vereshchagin, who himself was a talented organizer, traveled half the world. Petersburg, Warsaw, Riga, Vilna, Helsingfors, Paris, Berlin, Dresden, Vienna, Prague, Budapest, Copenhagen, Leipzig, Christiania and later - America. And everywhere the artist's exhibitions broke down, they were attended by a huge number of spectators. Once in Vienna, the crowd broke all the windows, broke down the doors, poured into the room, and the administration of the house was frightened, no matter how the floor of the exhibition hall failed.
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1888-1894: Russian series
In 1887-1888 Vereshchagin made trips to provincial Russian cities. Now, instead of exotic palm trees and Buddhist temples, simple gray huts, churches and Russian fairy-tale antiquity flash before his eyes, and ancient iconostases and dark interiors of beautiful northern churches are full of sketches.
Having created all this beauty, the artist, along with the "Trilogy of Executions" and Palestinian sketches, is taking him - first to Paris, and then to New York. Here, in order to create a special atmosphere of celebration and art, he invites to the exhibition a young talented pianist - Lydia Vasilievna Andreevskaya, who soon becomes his second wife. With the first, German in origin, he broke up.
1901: Spanish-American War
At the end of 1900, Vereshchagin went to the Philippines to see the end of the Spanish-American War (according to her impressions, a series about an American military hospital was written), and again, for the second time, he went with a large exhibition to the United States.
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Already in America, Vereshchagin planned to paint another large picture depicting the capture of the Saint-Juan Heights by the Americans. To this end, he specially traveled to Cuba, met with the future President of America Theodore Roosevelt, who led the assault on these heights, and made a lot of major costs. The picture really liked the American viewer. She, along with other canvases, was offered to be bought from the artist by one American entrepreneur with the condition that he pay their value only after he takes them and shows them throughout America.
The artist trusted the deft manager and gave him all the paintings without concluding an agreement, after which he disappeared from Vereshchagin without paying him a penny. This wild incident led Vereshchagin to a financial disaster. To organize his solo exhibitions overseas, go to the Philippines, and then to Cuba, the artist spent huge funds, and now part of the paintings that required large investments was stolen. From despair, the artist even fell ill with a nervous disorder.
The purchase by the imperial court of the entire series of paintings about the Patriotic War of 1812 for 100 thousand rubles saved the situation.
1903: Japanese Series
Vereshchagin's last exotic trip was a 1903 trip to Japan, a country that had long attracted and interested him. Vereshchagin really liked the island hardworking state, and he took out a lot of rare objects: old porcelain, bronze, ivory and walnut figures, umbrellas, fans and elegant, silk-embroidered kimonos.
True, Vereshchagin was prevented from staying longer in Japan by undisguised preparations for the war, which very worried the artist. At the end of November 1903, he returned to Russia, and already in February 1904 he went to the Russo-Japanese War. The separation from the family (wife and three children) was quite difficult. Despite the solid age of the artist: he was already sixty-second year old, his relatives understood that it was impossible to stop him.
In March, Vereshchagin met in Port Arthur with his old acquaintance Admiral S.O. Makarov and developed tireless ebullient activity: he examined Russian ships, participated in small operations and, as always, painted endlessly. On March 31, he and Makarov set off on the battleship Petropavlovsk to the site of the recent death of the destroyer Strashny in the hope of picking up the surviving sailors. The admiral persuaded Vereshchagin to stay, but he, as always, refused.
Going into the open sea, "Petropavlovsk" began a shootout with the enemy. At 9 hours 43 minutes, he ran into mines supplied by the Japanese. A terrible explosion followed, and after him and others - one after another the torpedo cellar, a warehouse of shells and steam boilers of the battleship exploded. Within a minute and a half, the giant machina of a warship disappeared under water, taking with it more than six hundred people, among whom were Admiral Makarov and Vereshchagin.
The last person to see the artist on board was the miraculously rescued captain, who conveyed that just a few minutes before the explosion, he was hastily drawing something in a notebook. As a real soldier, Vereshchagin heroically died at a combat post...
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