Vereshchagin is often called a battle painter. But was it in the sense that is embedded in these words ?. The battalist, painting the war, shows beautiful spectacular pictures of battles, vivid images of her heroes-winners, miserable defeated. All this is absent in the paintings of the great painter. Vasily Vereshchagin, with his specific means, fought for peace, showing the everyday non-heroic horrors of war.
Psychology of war
We live in a civilization of war. War is the reality of the historical path and historical consciousness of mankind from the very inception of human civilization. There has never really been peace on Earth. It seems to be a utopia, a dream, and war - a reality and everyday life on planet Earth. War as a stable and constant phenomenon is very scary. Vasily Vereshchagin showed the highest degree of manifestation of war.
People represent the war in realities - ideology, technology, heroes, antiheroes, victims, calculations, army movements. We know a lot about wars. And, strangely enough, for centuries, winners and conquerors have been of interest to people. There is something in human nature that contributes to the outbreak of war. Along with the seizure of material values, there is also another need for convincing leadership, in order to be higher, stronger than the one who is nearby, and even the one who is further, to authorize oneself over others.
Vereshchagin Vasily Vasilievich (whose photo is presented above) in many of his cycles of work reflected this terrible phenomenon.
Episodes from the life of the artist
In Cherepovets, a third child is born in the family of the leader of the nobility Vereshchagin, who receives the name Vasily in baptism. The future has already been prepared for him - he will become a military man. Vasily Vereshchagin, despite the reluctance to become a military officer, graduated with honors from the naval cadet corps, but quickly retires and begins to study painting in St. Petersburg and then in Paris.
The war as such, apparently, had already interested him since his youth. In 1865, he wrote in the Caucasus from life, and the first unusual works of the Caucasian cycle will appear. It must be said right away that Vasily Vereshchagin never stopped, having painted one picture, he describes the phenomenon as a whole, with a series of paintings that make up an indivisible cycle.
Turkestan cycle
He spends the year 1868 in Central Asia, takes part in battles, withstands the siege of Samarkand together with soldiers and officers, receives the Order of St. George 4th class for military merits, and makes sketches. In 1871 in Munich he wrote a cycle of thirteen paintings, as well as sketches and sketches, which he exhibited first in London and then in St. Petersburg. Everything was amazing in them - both the plots and the new pictorial language.
The success was incredible. But the government refused to acquire 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 paintings to everyone. Everyone was stunned by the unexpected approach to the topic. Everything was new, bright and technically, and plot. The artist for the viewer made the discovery of the unknown.
India
In 1874 he went to India, where he spent two years and visited Tibet. Vereshchagin Vasily Vasilyevich will be deeply interested in India, and he will visit her again in 1882-1883. He lives in large cities - in Bombay, Agra, Delhi. A trip to the Eastern Himalayas will take several months, and then a long and difficult journey to Kashmir and Ladak. At the risk of his life, in the winter, he climbs into the mountains. Conductors even abandon him, but despite everything, terrible headaches, frost, he, as an obsessed person, paints majestic, virgin paintings that have never been seen before him. The whitish mountain peaks, the ultramarine sky, the snow casting pink make you want to repeat the hard climb. In India, a lot has been written, about one hundred and fifty, of 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, merchants in the streets - everything else. And the artist Vasily Vereshchagin wants to show the ancient culture of six thousand years to the whole world.
Balkan series
When the Russian-Turkish war began, the artist immediately sent to the army in 1877. He takes part 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. For two years he painted thirty paintings reflecting the main episodes of the war. This included the tragic third assault of Plevna, and the terrible battles at Telish, and the victory at Shipka.
This cycle of paintings will always be reminiscent of the mistakes of command and of the high price the Russians got for the liberation of the Bulgarians from the Turkish yoke. He first exhibited this series together with the Indian in London and Paris, and then it was demonstrated for ten years in the cities of Europe and America. In Russia, she was exhibited twice in St. Petersburg and Moscow.
Palestine and Syria
After this work, in 1884 he will visit Syria and Palestine, where works on Gospel themes will be written.
But, as always, the artist will approach the work unconventionally, without a true religious feeling. Having freed the work from the supernatural, he will cause a scandal. In Russia, the show of this series was banned.
Barbarians
These paintings were part of the Turkestan series, but the artist wanted to isolate them separately, where he put the psychology of a soldier at the forefront and brought to nothing the commander.
Patriotic War of 1812
This series has been becoming a dominant theme since a certain time, since about 1897. He turns to her constantly, changing ideas and execution. This historical epic is composed of twenty paintings, but it has remained unfinished. The first 17 works are devoted to the main episodes of Napoleon's invasion of Russia. They have the battle of Borodino, and the fire in Moscow, and unsuccessful peace talks, 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 kind, the work of imagination is given to him with difficulty, which cannot be said by looking at his canvases. The portrait of Napoleon is unusually good, in the eyes of a Russian man, of course, completely debunking 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 acquire it. And only in 1902 the government bought it and placed it in the Russian Museum under pressure from the public. We formed all our visual views on the Patriotic War of 1812 thanks to the brilliant works of Vasily Vereshchagin.
Russian North
Suddenly, the artist is fond of the history of Russian architecture. The painter works in Yaroslavl, Rostov, Kostroma, deeply immersed in Russian antiquity. And all this goes in parallel with the work on the war of the 12th year. Vasily Vereshchagin leaves for the Russian north. He visits Pinega, the Northern Dvina, the White Sea, Solovki. His landscapes are full of peace and tranquility, which entered his soul. He meets the art of peasants, sees old wooden churches. And etudes with the image of Russian wooden architecture appear. It makes a deep impression on him. He is building a house for himself in Moscow, which looks like a Russian hut. She became a workshop in which Vereshchagin Vasily Vasilyevich painted.
Japanese series
A trip to Japan falls on the eve of the Russo-Japanese war. But while the artist still does not know about it. Unusual forms, new ceremonies, other food and the method of its reception cannot but stun Vereshchagin, especially since the culture of engraving, art varnishes, metal and bone works is so highly developed there. The laconicism inherent in Japanese art simply cannot fail to captivate the artist. But with a cosmopolitan gaze he reflects in his works the most characteristic and bright - temples, Japanese women in a kimono, beggars, a priest.
Vereshchagin did not travel around the world by chance. 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 colonial wars and the enslavement of the "lower" races and peoples, their cruel exploitation could not but worry the pacifist artist. Russia must bear the ex oriente lux, transferring its experience to developing civilizations and developing itself, while not enslaving anyone. This is evidenced by the entire painting of Vasily Vereshchagin.
At the beginning of the Russo-Japanese War, the artist went to the Pacific Ocean. He died on an armadillo along with Admiral Makarov in a mine explosion. Such was the artist Vasily Vereshchagin. His biography is extraordinary, and his thoughts are consonant with our time.