Vasily Vereshchagin. Artist, warrior, citizen. Voronchikhin A.A.

Vasily Vasilievich Vereshchagin (1842–1904) - an outstanding Russian painter, a recognized master of battle scenes. Deeply convinced that the paintings of the real war cannot be written, looking at it “from the beautiful far away”, the artist visited many hot spots of the late XIX - early XX centuries. Participating in the battles, Vereshchagin saw the true face of the war - hunger and cold, inhuman labor and fatigue, hundreds and thousands of tormented, wounded, dead people. That is how he captured the battles in his paintings, for which he was accused of undermining the patriotic spirit and sympathy for the enemy.

The contempt for gross power was combined in an artist with a deep interest in life. Vereshchagin made a lot of travels: in Transcaucasia, Turkestan, India, Palestine, America, Japan, to the Balkans and the Russian North, from everywhere, bringing sketches for future paintings, as well as travel notes that give out a sensitive contemplator, attentive to the beauty of the world. The painter himself admitted that his whole life “loved the sun and wanted to write the sun”, but again and again he was haunted by the “fury of war”. It was she who summed up his bright life-Vereshchagin died at the front of the Russo-Japanese War.

The extraordinary fate of a brilliant artist, reminiscent of an adventure novel, has become the subject of the sincere interest of Anatoly Voronchikhin. This book is the result of many years of research by the author, opening up new facets of the biography and work of Vereshchagin.