- 9
Vasili Vasilievich Vereshchagin
bidding is closed
Description
- Vasili Vasilievich Vereshchagin
- Cossack Picket on the Danube
- signed and dated B. VERESHCHAGIN 1886 (lower left)
- oil on canvas
- 39 1/8 by 53 in.
- 99.4 by 134.6 cm
Provenance
Sale, Sotheby's, London, November 24, 1992, lot 78, illustrated
Catalogue Note
Russian artist Vasili Vereshchagin’s haunting monumental anti-war compositions are immortalized in the galleries of the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow. His inordinate success in his lifetime prompted extensive exhibitions of his work in London, Paris and the United States. He is considered Russia’s greatest battle painter, as his work reveals the often devastatingly painful, macabre effects of war.
Vereshchagin traveled extensively throughout Russia, Europe, the Middle East and Asia, taking part in various military campaigns and sketching ceaselessly. His representations of war evoke senseless horrors and convey his passionate pacifism. ``Observing life through all of my various travels,’’ wrote Vereshchagin, ``I have been particularly struck by the fact, that even in our time, people kill one another under all possible pretexts, and by every possible means. Wholesale murder is still called war, while killing individuals is called execution. Everywhere the same worship of brute strength, the same inconsistency; on the one hand men slaying their fellows by the million for an idea, often impracticable, are elevated to a high pedestal of public admiration; on the otherhand, men who kill individuals for the sake of a crust of bread are mercilessly and promptly exterminated…These facts, observed on many occasions, made a strong impression on my mind and after having carefully thought the matter over, I painted several pictures on wars and executions…But the sight of heaps of human beings slaughtered, shot, beheaded, hanged under my very eyes in all that region extending from the frontier of China to Bulgaria, has not failed to impress itself vividly on the imaginative side of my art’’ (Vasili Vereshchagin as quoted in Anonymous, ``The Verestchagin Exhibition,’’ The Studio, vol. III, no. 12, 1888, p. 181).
The present work depicts a vigilant Cossack standing watch. Vereshchagin considered Cossacks the greatest men for outpost service in the Russian army. Pickets of Cossacks were stationed along the left bank of the Danube opposite Rustchuk, before Russians crossed the river. Vereshchagin recalled that ``the detachment placed pickets along the Danube for a great distance. On the left bank, in Malorosh, were stationed Orloff's Don Cossacks; in the centre, stretching as far as the village of Mali-Dijos, the Kuban Cossacks, and beyond them, reaching to the village of Petroshain, the Ossetes'' (V. V. Vereshchagin in V.V.Vereshchagin: Painter, Soldier, Traveler: Autobiographical Sketches, 1888, p. 56). Wrapped beacons with tarred straw were posted and lit in case of danger, an important signal alerting alarm. The sentinel in the present composition stands upon a sandy mound of earth in front of a brilliantly luminous placid stream. Vereshchagin described in his reminiscences about the Russo-Turkish War how he experienced the ``view of the Danube glittering like a silver band in the sunshine'' (V. V. Vereshchagin in Ibid., p. 53). Vereshchagin captures this luminous silver tonality in the present work, where he masterfully conveys a rare moment of fleeting quiet. Vereshchagin did a number of versions on this theme, including Cossack Picket on the Danube which was sold in 1891 through the American Art Galleries (see fig. 1).
Vasili Vereshchagin found a devoted audience in Europe and America, as evidenced by an extensive retrospective of his work at the American Art Galleries in 1888, just two years after the completion of the present composition. He perished in an explosion on the battleship Petropavlosk during the Russo-Japanese war in 1904. In his remarkable retrospective at the American Art Galleries a critic noted, ``Verestchagin is a literary realist who expresses himself in form and color instead of words. He has something to say, and says it so well that the world stops to listen. All artistic methods are at his command. He can paint a St. Petersburg crowd, lifesize with the brush of a giant; or he can with a delicate pencil sketch, an inch square, give the life, character, form and even color, of a picturesque type of humanity’’ (Anonymous, ``The Verestchagin Exhibition at the American Art Galleries,’’ The Critic, November 17, 1888, p. 247) It is no wonder that Ilya Repin, one of Russia’s most important realist painters viewed Vereshchagin as ``a real Hercules…a genius, a superman.’’ (as quoted in Vahan D. Barooshian, V.V.Vereshchagin: Artist at War, 1993, p. xv).
Vereshchagin traveled extensively throughout Russia, Europe, the Middle East and Asia, taking part in various military campaigns and sketching ceaselessly. His representations of war evoke senseless horrors and convey his passionate pacifism. ``Observing life through all of my various travels,’’ wrote Vereshchagin, ``I have been particularly struck by the fact, that even in our time, people kill one another under all possible pretexts, and by every possible means. Wholesale murder is still called war, while killing individuals is called execution. Everywhere the same worship of brute strength, the same inconsistency; on the one hand men slaying their fellows by the million for an idea, often impracticable, are elevated to a high pedestal of public admiration; on the otherhand, men who kill individuals for the sake of a crust of bread are mercilessly and promptly exterminated…These facts, observed on many occasions, made a strong impression on my mind and after having carefully thought the matter over, I painted several pictures on wars and executions…But the sight of heaps of human beings slaughtered, shot, beheaded, hanged under my very eyes in all that region extending from the frontier of China to Bulgaria, has not failed to impress itself vividly on the imaginative side of my art’’ (Vasili Vereshchagin as quoted in Anonymous, ``The Verestchagin Exhibition,’’ The Studio, vol. III, no. 12, 1888, p. 181).
The present work depicts a vigilant Cossack standing watch. Vereshchagin considered Cossacks the greatest men for outpost service in the Russian army. Pickets of Cossacks were stationed along the left bank of the Danube opposite Rustchuk, before Russians crossed the river. Vereshchagin recalled that ``the detachment placed pickets along the Danube for a great distance. On the left bank, in Malorosh, were stationed Orloff's Don Cossacks; in the centre, stretching as far as the village of Mali-Dijos, the Kuban Cossacks, and beyond them, reaching to the village of Petroshain, the Ossetes'' (V. V. Vereshchagin in V.V.Vereshchagin: Painter, Soldier, Traveler: Autobiographical Sketches, 1888, p. 56). Wrapped beacons with tarred straw were posted and lit in case of danger, an important signal alerting alarm. The sentinel in the present composition stands upon a sandy mound of earth in front of a brilliantly luminous placid stream. Vereshchagin described in his reminiscences about the Russo-Turkish War how he experienced the ``view of the Danube glittering like a silver band in the sunshine'' (V. V. Vereshchagin in Ibid., p. 53). Vereshchagin captures this luminous silver tonality in the present work, where he masterfully conveys a rare moment of fleeting quiet. Vereshchagin did a number of versions on this theme, including Cossack Picket on the Danube which was sold in 1891 through the American Art Galleries (see fig. 1).
Vasili Vereshchagin found a devoted audience in Europe and America, as evidenced by an extensive retrospective of his work at the American Art Galleries in 1888, just two years after the completion of the present composition. He perished in an explosion on the battleship Petropavlosk during the Russo-Japanese war in 1904. In his remarkable retrospective at the American Art Galleries a critic noted, ``Verestchagin is a literary realist who expresses himself in form and color instead of words. He has something to say, and says it so well that the world stops to listen. All artistic methods are at his command. He can paint a St. Petersburg crowd, lifesize with the brush of a giant; or he can with a delicate pencil sketch, an inch square, give the life, character, form and even color, of a picturesque type of humanity’’ (Anonymous, ``The Verestchagin Exhibition at the American Art Galleries,’’ The Critic, November 17, 1888, p. 247) It is no wonder that Ilya Repin, one of Russia’s most important realist painters viewed Vereshchagin as ``a real Hercules…a genius, a superman.’’ (as quoted in Vahan D. Barooshian, V.V.Vereshchagin: Artist at War, 1993, p. xv).