Wassili Wassiljewitsch Vereschtschagin

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WW Vereschagin
Vereschchagin's photo from 1902
Contemporary engraving

Vasily Vasilyevich Vereshchagin ( Russian Василий Васильевич Верещагин , scientific. Transliteration Vasilij Vasil'evič Vereščagin * 14 . Jul / 26. October  1842 greg. In Cherepovets , province Novgorod , † March 31 jul. / 13. April  1904 greg. Ago Port Arthur , on the sinking of the ship of the line Petropavlovsk ) was a well-known Russian war painter .

Life

Vereshchagin was born in the family of a large farmer . At the age of 8, his parents sent him to a military school . From 1853 he was trained in the St. Petersburg Naval School. In 1859 he became an officer and then studied from 1860 to 1863 at the St. Petersburg Art Academy , which he eventually left prematurely because he rejected the academy's teaching system. After a long stay in Tbilisi and after traveling through France and the Pyrenees, he lived in Paris for a year , where he continued his studies at the renowned École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts de Paris under Jean-Léon Gérôme . As a painter he became a pupil of the French school here. He combined the security and delicacy of the drawing as well as the sharpness of the modeling with a glossy, juicy coloring .

In 1867 he joined General Kaufmann's expedition to Turkestan . In 1870 Wereschtschagin settled in the studio of the Munich artist Theodor Horschelt and carried out the studies and sketches he had brought with him into paintings that treated less scenes of war than interesting architectures of Bucharian cities and genre images from popular life. In 1874 he made a long trip to India.

Vereschagin was later an eyewitness to the Russian conquest of Central Asia and the Russo-Turkish War of 1877/78 . Among other things, he attended the battle of the Shipka Pass . These costly battles had a great impact on his worldview. The horror of this war seized him, so that he decided to propagate a pacifist worldview through a picturesque depiction of the atrocities . In his works, for example, there are often battlefields with dead and wounded, looting, dressing stations, extinct hospitals, soldiers buried by the snow or mutilated corpses.

From 1881 to 1882 he made a round trip to Vienna, Berlin and other cities. In 1884 he made a second trip to India and then visited Syria and the holy places in Palestine, the study of which led him to a series of pictures from the life of Christ in a naturalistic-ethnographic conception with a strong emphasis on the landscape. He later traveled to Russia and the countries of Eastern Europe. From there it went on to the United States in 1902 . He also traveled to Japan via Cuba and the Philippines , where he stayed from 1903 and got to know Japanese culture and history . After the beginning of the Russo-Japanese War , Vereshchagin immediately set out for Port Arthur .

Most recently he was on board Admiral Makarov's flagship Petropavlovsk . The ship sank in the Yellow Sea on April 13, 1904 , within two minutes of crashing into a mine and exploding the ammunition chamber. Vereshchagin and the admiral were not among the few survivors. Vereshchagin's last work, a picture of a council of war chaired by the admiral, was recovered from the water almost undamaged.

Honors

The settlement Voznesenskaya (Вознесенская) was renamed Vereschtschagino in his honor in 1915 , since Vereshchagin had made a stopover in 1904 on the way to the scenes of the Russo-Japanese War.

Likewise, the minor planet (3410) Vereshchagin, discovered by Ljudmyla Schuravlowa in 1978, bears his name.

The art museum of the Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv is named after him.

Works

His paintings were created from sketches that he made directly in battles or on his travels.

An example of his working method is the painting Storm of the San Juan Hill , a battle of the Spanish-American War in 1898. Vereschchagin met then President Theodore Roosevelt in 1902 , who had commanded the attack of his Rough Riders , and then visited the battle site in Cuba to do field studies. The painting has been hanging in the restaurant of the Mission Inn Hotel in California since 1913 .

In his basic democratic attitude, Vereschagin was close to the Peredwischniki group of artists ; In his style, he developed Russian war painting from the up to then rather Romanesque-heroic depiction to broader philosophical considerations of the events of the war.

His thematic painting cycles are well known, such as Turkestanskaja (1871–74), Balkanskaja (1877–78 and 1880 ff.) And the cycle on the Patriotic War . For example, the painting Napoleon at Borodino , which depicts a scene from the Battle of Borodino , comes from this .

Another painting by the artist shows the resurrection of Christ and is located in the chancel of the Russian Orthodox Church of St. Alexandra in Bad Ems . Wereschchagin made the picture as a gift for the community during a stay at the spa.

His painting Apotheosis of War , created between 1871 and 1872, shows a pyramid of human skulls in a devastated landscape, the picture relates to the Mongolian warfare . Vereshchagin dedicated the picture "to all great conquerors: the past, the present and the future" . The Icelandic artist Erró quoted the motif created by Wereschtschagin over 100 years later for his picture Good-bye Vietnam .

  • Dervishes in holiday decorations (1870)

  • Sudden attack ,
    Turkestan cycle (1871)

  • About the War ,
    Turkestan Cycle (1873)

  • Napoleon at Borodino (1897)

  • The 1871 painting The Apotheosis of War is exhibited in Moscow's Tretyakov Gallery .

  • Battlefield near Shipka

  • Execution of Sepoys (1857)

Publications

Vereshchagin was also active as a writer and published the following works, among others:

  • “ Travel sketches from India. "(German: Leipzig 1882 and 1885, 2 vols.)
  • “ Sketches and memories. "(German from Kretschmann: das. 1885)
  • “ At home and in war. Memories and Sketches of a Russian nobleman, 1853–81 "(German: Berlin 1886)
  • “ My childhood. Memories ”. In: German Review. 13th year (1888) Breslau

literature

Web links

Commons : Vasily Vereshchagin  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ " Dictionary of minor planet names " by Lutz D. Schmadel , IAU Commission 20., International Astronomical Union
  2. ↑ FAZ from July 19, 2010, page 28
personal data
SURNAME Vereschchagin, Wassili Wassiljewitsch
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Верещагин, Василий Васильевич (Russian spelling)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Russian battle painter
DATE OF BIRTH October 26, 1842
PLACE OF BIRTH Cherepovets , Novgorod Governorate , Russian Empire
DATE OF DEATH April 13, 1904
Place of death off Port Arthur , China