Vasily
Vereshchagin

Vasily Vereshchagin (1 (13) January 1856, Perm — 09 October 1909, St. Petersburg) was a historical painter, portrait painter, icon painter. He studied with I. V. Babin and A. U. Orlov. Vasily Vereshchagin  graduated from the Imperial Academy of Arts (1861). In  1863—1869 he retired in France and Italy. During 1869—1894, he was a lecturer at the IAA. Since 1860 Vasily Vereshchagin participated in various exhibitions: IAA, Society of Russian Watercolourists. At the World Exhibitions in London (1872), Vienna (1873) and Paris (1878) he was awarded with Golden Medals. In 1878 he contributed to the Traveling academic exhibition in Ekaterinburg and the organization of the art department there at museum of the Ural Society of Natural Science Lovers, as well as the creation of art dep. in Perm Scientific and Industrial museum in 1907.

Some most significant works: Prayer of St. Anne, the Mother of the Prophet Samuel (1864, Perm State Art Gallery), Prisoner Meeting His Family (1868, Tretyakov Gallery; repeat —1869, Perm State Art Gallery), Tired Girl (1883, Perm State Art Gallery), The Siege of the Trinity Sergius Lavra in Sergiev Posad in 1608 (1891, State Russian Museum), icons for the Moscow Cathedral of Christ the Saviour (1875—1879, State Museum of the History of Religion). (Egorova E. I.)

Vasily Vereshchagin, professor at the Imperial Academy of Arts, was born in 1835. He received his primary art education from a local icon painter; but in 1856 he entered the Academy of Arts as a student of A. T. Markov. During his six-year study at the Academy, he received all academic medals (in 1858 — 2nd silver; 1859 — 1st silver; 1860 — 2nd gold for the Olympic Games program; 1861 — 1st gold for the At the wedding of Grand Prince Vassily II Tyomniy in 1433, Grand Princess Sophia Tears Down the Belt That Once Belonged to Dmitry Donskoy program, then he received the title of the 1st degree class artist). Having gone abroad as a pensioner of the academy (1863), Vereshchagin visited all the important art centres, but he worked mainly in Rome, studying and copying the Old Masters. In 1869, he received the title of the 2nd degree professor for his Prisoner Meeting His Family painting, in 1883 — the 1st degree professor.

Having returned to Russia, Vereshchagin became a teacher of the history class at the Academy of Arts (in 1894, he left the Academy of Arts service). At the same time, he also worked a lot on his own paintings, which are characterized by high performing skills, verified picture construction and excellent drawing, just like paintings by most of the Academy graduates.
Such are the artist’s paintings on biblical subjects (for example, Night at Golgotha, 1860), such are the paintings based on Ruthenian epics (Ilya Muromets at a Feast of Prince Volodymyr, 1872) and the history of the Ruthenian land (The Siege of the Trinity Sergius Lavra in Sergiev Posad in 1608, 1891; Vision of Dmitry Donskoy on Kulikovo Field, 1896), he created genre paintings Peasant Woman, On the Way, Sharmanka, Tired Girl, etc.). In 1907, V. P. Vereshchagin sent several pictures of his and his brother to the Perm Museum, they were the beginning of the art department of the museum.

Like most classical artists, Vereshchagin worked a lot on the design of churches and cathedrals under construction (sketches of mosaics for St. Isaac’s Cathedral in St. Petersburg, icons for the main iconostasis of the Moscow Cathedral of Christ the Saviour and the Assumption Cathedral of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra).

In 1891, Vereshchagin published his “History of the Russian state in the image of its sovereign rulers”.