Artist Vasily Vereshchagin: biography, creativity, photo

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Vereshchagin is often called a battle painter. But was he such in the sense that is embedded in these words? The battle painter, painting the war, shows beautiful spectacular pictures of battles, vivid images of its victorious heroes, miserable vanquished. All this is absent in the paintings of the great painter. Vasily Vereshchagin fought for peace with his specific means, showing the everyday unheroic horrors of war.

Psychology of war

We live in a civilization of war. War is a reality of the historical path and historical consciousness of mankind from the very birth of human civilization. There has never really been peace on Earth. It seems to be a utopia, a dream, and war is a reality and everyday life on planet Earth. War as a stable and permanent phenomenon is very terrible. Vasily Vereshchagin showed the highest degree of manifestation of war.

People represent war in reality - ideology, technology, heroes, anti-heroes, victims, calculations, army movements. We know a lot about wars. And, oddly enough, people have been interested in winners and conquerors for centuries. Is inhuman nature something that contributes to the emergence of war. Along with the seizure of material values, there is another thing, the need for convincing leadership, for being higher, stronger than the one who is nearby and even the one who is further away, to assert oneself over others with authority.

Vereshchagin Vasily Vasilyevich (whose photo is presented above) reflected this terrible phenomenon in many of his work cycles.

Episodes from the artist's life

In Cherepovets, the third child is born in the family of the leader of the nobility Vereshchagin, who receives the name Vasily in baptism. The future is already prepared for him - he will become a military man. Vasily Vereshchagin, despite his unwillingness to become a regular soldier, graduated with honors from the naval cadet corps, but quickly retired and began to study painting in St. Petersburg, and then in Paris.

War as such, apparently, from his youth interested him. In 1865, he painted from life in the Caucasus, and the first unusual works of the Caucasian cycle appeared. It must be said right away that Vasily Vereshchagin never stopped, painting one picture, he describes the phenomenon as a whole, a number of pictures that form an indivisible cycle.

Turkestan cycle

1868 he spends in Central Asia, participates in battles, withstands the siege of Samarkand together with soldiers and officers, receives the Order of St. George 4th class for military merits, makes sketches. In 1871, in Munich, he wrote a cycle of thirteen paintings, as well as studies and sketches, which he exhibited first in London and then in St. Petersburg. In themeverything was amazing - both the plots and the new pictorial language.

The success was incredible. But the government refused to purchase this cycle, which was supposed to be in the public domain, and not belong to one private individual. It was bought by P. Tretyakov, who made a special extension to his gallery and presented the paintings to everyone. Everyone was stunned by the unexpected approach to the topic. Everything was new, bright both technically and in plot. The artist made a discovery of the unknown for the viewer.

India

In 1874 he went to India, where he would spend two years and visit Tibet. Vereshchagin Vasily Vasilyevich became deeply interested in India, and he would visit it again in 1882-1883. He also lives in large cities - in Bombay, Agra, Delhi. A few months will take a trip to the Eastern Himalayas, and then a long and difficult journey to Kashmir and Ladakh. At the risk of his life, in winter, he climbs the mountains. His guides even leave him, but in spite of everything, terrible headaches, frost, he, like a man possessed, paints the majestic, virgin, unseen pictures that open before him. The whitest mountain peaks, ultramarine sky, pinkish snow make you want to repeat the difficult ascent. A lot has been written in India, about one hundred and fifty, landscapes, genre scenes, portraits.

This is not surprising, since the culture of India is strikingly different from the usual Western world. These temples, their interior decoration, ritual dances, traders on the streets - everything is different. Andartist Vasily Vereshchagin wants to show the ancient, six thousand years old culture to the whole world.

Balkan series

When the Russian-Turkish war began, the artist immediately went to the army in 1877. He participates in battles and is seriously injured - a stray bullet hit his thigh, and improper treatment led to gangrene. But she was stopped in time. Shipka, Plevna - Vereshchagin Vasily Vasilyevich visited everywhere and brought sketches and objects from everywhere that could complement his impressions. In two years, he painted thirty paintings reflecting the main episodes of the war. This included the tragic third assault on Plevna, and the terrible battles near Telish, and the victory at Shipka.

This cycle of paintings will always remind you of the mistakes of the command and of the high price paid by the Russians for the liberation of the Bulgarians from the Turkish yoke. He first exhibited this series together with the Indian one in London and Paris, and then it was shown for ten years in the cities of Europe and America. In Russia, she exhibited twice in St. Petersburg and Moscow.

Palestine and Syria

After this work in 1884 he will visit Syria and Palestine, where works on themes of the Gospel will be written.

But, as always, the artist will approach the work outside the box, without a devout religious feeling. Freeing the works from the supernatural, he will cause a scandal. This episode was banned in Russia.

Barbarians

These paintings were part ofTurkestan series, but the artist wanted to highlight them separately, where he put the psychology of a soldier at the head and nullified the meaning of the commander.

Patriotic War of 1812

This series has become the main theme since about 1897. He turns to her constantly, changing ideas and execution. This historical epic is composed of twenty paintings, but it remained unfinished. The first 17 works are devoted to the main episodes of Napoleon's invasion of Russia. They include the battle of Borodino, a fire in Moscow, unsuccessful peace negotiations, and the death of the French army in the snow. And three paintings are dedicated to guerrilla warfare. Since he did not observe all this in nature, the work of the imagination is given to him with difficulty, which cannot be said by looking at his canvases. An unusually good portrait of Napoleon, in the eyes of a Russian person, of course, completely debunks the image of a hero and a great man.

This series was first exhibited in Moscow and St. Petersburg in 1895-1896. No one expressed a desire to buy it. And only in 1902, under pressure from the public, the government bought it and placed it in the Russian Museum. We formed all our visual views on the Patriotic War of 1812 thanks to the brilliant work of Vasily Vereshchagin.

Russian North

Unexpectedly, the artist is interested in the history of Russian architecture. The painter works in Yaroslavl, Rostov, Kostroma, plunging deeply into Russian antiquity. And all this goes in parallel with the work on the theme of the war of the 12th year. Vasily Vereshchaginleaves for the Russian north. He visits Pinega, the Northern Dvina, the White Sea, Solovki. His landscapes are full of peace and tranquility that entered his soul. He meets the art of the peasants, sees the old wooden churches. And there are sketches depicting Russian wooden architecture. It makes a deep impression on him. He is building a house in Moscow that looks like a Russian hut. She became a workshop in which Vereshchagin Vasily Vasilyevich painted pictures.

Japanese series

The trip to Japan falls on the eve of the Russo-Japanese War. But while the artist does not know about it yet. Unusual forms, new ceremonies, different food and the way of eating it cannot but stun Vereshchagin, especially since the culture of engraving, artistic varnishes, metal and bone works is so highly developed there. The laconicism inherent in Japanese art simply cannot but captivate the artist. But with a cosmopolitan look, he reflects in his works the most characteristic and striking - temples, Japanese women in kimonos, beggars, a priest.

Vereshchagin did not accidentally travel around the world. He perceived all peoples as a single community, each of which contributed to the development of civilization and culture. The neglect of the man of the West, who carried the colonial wars and the enslavement of the "lower" races and peoples, their cruel exploitation could not but excite the pacifist artist. Ex oriente lux should be carried by Russia, passing on its experience to developing civilizations and developing itself, without enslaving anyone. This is evidenced by all the paintings of Vasily Vereshchagin.

At the beginning of the Russo-Japanese War, the artist went to the Pacific Ocean. He died onbattleship along with Admiral Makarov during a mine explosion. Such was the artist Vasily Vereshchagin. His biography is unusual, and his thoughts are in tune with our time.