Vasily Vereshchagin

Exhibitions of Vasily Vasilyevich Vereshchagin in Russia, Europe, and America caused a huge commotion. Admirers of his work included Turgenev, Mussorgsky, Stasov, and Tretyakov; Liszt called him a genius of painting. He showed his paintings to Russian emperors and the German Kaiser, called a friend of the U.S. president T. Roosevelt, was at war alongside General Skobelev and Admiral Makarov. The artist visited many of the then “hot spots”: in Turkestan, the Balkans, and the Philippines. His travel routes ran across Europe, Asia, North America, and Cuba. He painted the snowy peaks of the Himalayas, rural churches in the Russian North, and the deserts of Central Asia. Vereshchagin influenced the development of the pacifism movement and was put forward as a candidate for the first Nobel Peace Prize. Arkady Kudry’s book tells about a painter who was used to living dangerously, at times deadly risky—devoting most of his works to the harsh truth of war—and who died as a soldier on a ship sunk by an enemy mine…