V.V. Vereshchagin

the long version

Vereshchagin, the most popular and famous Russian artist in Western Europe and America in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, dedicated his life and art to opposing violence. Yet today his personal legacy of peace is forgotten. This biography tells for the first time in English the story of Vereshchagin's courage and tenacity in his struggle against the misery of war. Using historical accounts and the artist's own writings, Vahan Barooshian examines Vereshchagin's artistic depiction of war (both historic and contemporary), showing how his understanding of violence underwent a radical transformation in life as well as in art. He explores the role that war played in the nineteenth-century idea of progress and devotes one chapter to Vereshchagin's representation of Napoleon's invasion of Russia in 1812. To Vereshchagin and others of the intelligentsia, Russian colonial expansion raised ethical dilemmas; their art was frequently at cross-purposes with the state. Barooshian notes the parallels in this regard between Vereshchagin's and Tolstoy's visions of history. While this is a book for scholars of history, politics, and art, general readers as well will discover the absorbing personal story of Vereshchagin's travels, experiences in war, continual problems with money and the Russian autocracy, and dealings with patrons and commercial agents.