Vasily Vereshchagin and His Paintings of India

On this day, Russian painter, war artist, and traveller Vasily Vereshchagin was born.

Vasily Vasilyevich Vereshchagin (14/26 October 1842 – 13 April 1904) was a Russian painter, war artist and traveller, and one of the first Russian artists to win wide fame abroad. He is best remembered for unflinching war scenes such as The Apotheosis of War (1871), a pyramid of skulls picked over by crows.

Yet some of his most luminous work was made far from any battlefield, in India. Across two long journeys, in 1874–76 and 1882–83, he painted the Himalayas, Mughal monuments, Buddhist monasteries, ordinary Indians and the pageantry of the British Raj. Born on 14 October by the Old Style calendar, his birthday today is a fitting moment to revisit the India series, among the most extensive visual records of the subcontinent by any nineteenth-century European painter.

From naval cadet to painter of truth

Vereshchagin was born in Cherepovets, in the Novgorod Governorate, the middle of three brothers. He graduated first in his class from the naval cadet school, then left the service at once to study art at the Imperial Academy in St Petersburg, and later in Paris under the Orientalist Jean-Léon Gérôme.

He believed a painter should depict only what he had seen himself. He joined the Russian army in Turkestan in the late 1860s, fought in the defence of Samarkand and was decorated for it. The resulting Turkestan series, painted in Munich between 1871 and 1874, made him famous and controversial in equal measure.

That eyewitness principle shaped his approach to India. He went not to imagine an exotic East but to record it directly, sketching in oils in front of his subject.

The first India journey, 1874–76

Vereshchagin set out for India in late 1874 with his wife, Elizabeth, and spent more than two years travelling the subcontinent and the Himalayas. The route ran from St Petersburg through Constantinople and Egypt to India, and much of the travel was on horseback, by camel or on foot.

The Himalayas came first and tested him hardest. In January the couple tried to climb towards Dzongri in West Sikkim, at about 13,000 feet, and nearly froze to death before turning back. He also suffered a near-drowning and malaria, yet produced more than 150 sketches and studies across his Indian travels.

His route took in some of India’s most striking places:

Sikkim: Buddhist monasteries such as Tashiding, high snowfields and Lepcha and Bhutia villagers
Kashmir and Ladakh: glaciers and passes on the road to Leh
Delhi and Agra: Mughal monuments, the Red Fort, the Qutub Minar complex and the Taj Mahal
Rajasthan: Udaipur’s lake palaces and Jaipur, where he witnessed the Prince of Wales’s state visit in 1876

British officers were amused by the eccentric Russian, but some suspected his precise drawings of mountain passes were reconnaissance for the Tsar. He returned to Europe in late 1876 and worked up many studies into finished canvases.

Vereshchagin’s most important paintings of India

The Prince of Wales procession is the series’ showpiece and one of the largest oil paintings in India. It records the 1876 royal entry through Jaipur in almost documentary detail, with the Prince and the Maharaja on the lead elephant.

The Pearl Mosque is often called the most accomplished painting of the series. Its broad fields of white marble, softened by reflected light, contrast with the coloured clothes of worshippers in the portico. It shows that Vereshchagin could paint stillness as forcefully as battle.

Vasily Vereshchagin, Pearl Mosque at Delhi, ca. 1879, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA, USA.

The second journey and Blowing from Guns, 1882–84

Vereshchagin returned to India in 1882–83, now looking harder at the costs of imperial rule. The most famous result was Blowing from Guns in British India (1884), showing condemned men tied to the muzzles of cannon awaiting execution, a punishment notoriously used after the Indian Rebellion of 1857.

The painting caused an uproar when shown at London’s Grosvenor Gallery. British critics objected that the soldiers wore 1880s uniforms, implying the practice was current rather than a relic of 1857, and its photographic realism made it read like an eyewitness record. It was far better received in the United States.

The canvas is presumed destroyed and survives only in reproductions. It formed part of a trilogy on execution, alongside a Roman crucifixion and the hanging of Nihilists in St Petersburg, through which Vereshchagin argued that state violence looked the same in every empire, his own included.

How Vereshchagin painted India

His Indian pictures share a recognisable method:

Painted on the spot. Many studies are surprisingly small, made in front of the motif or in a makeshift local studio, then enlarged in Europe.
Intense, even light. He favoured strong sun on white marble and snow, with crisp shadows and clear colour, a legacy of Gérôme’s training.
Ethnographic precision. Costumes, jewellery, carts, weapons and architecture are recorded in exact detail, giving the series documentary value today.
Ordinary people as subjects. Alongside maharajas and princes he painted fakirs, pilgrims, Sikkimese villagers and street scenes in Delhi.

This approach set him apart from studio Orientalists who invented their scenes. It also shows the limits of a European outsider’s gaze: he chose what was picturesque, monumental or dramatic, and Indian life is framed through that eye.

Legacy and where to see his Indian paintings

The collector Pavel Tretyakov, founder of Moscow’s Tretyakov Gallery, bought 138 of Vereshchagin’s paintings and around 400 drawings, so much of the India series stayed together in Russia. Vereshchagin went on to paint the Napoleonic invasion of 1812, travel to the Philippines, America and Japan, and die on 13 April 1904 when the battleship Petropavlovsk struck mines off Port Arthur during the Russo-Japanese War.

For Indian readers, his work offers rare colour views of nineteenth-century monuments, Himalayan communities and colonial ceremony, painted by an artist with no stake in flattering the Raj. Key places to see it:

Victoria Memorial Hall, Kolkata: The State Procession of the Prince of Wales into Jaipur
State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow: the largest group of Indian studies, including Delhi, Udaipur, Sikkim and Ladakh scenes
State Russian Museum, St Petersburg: further works across his career
Vereshchagin Art Museum, Mykolaiv, Ukraine: The Snow of the Himalayas

Frequently asked questions

When was Vasily Vereshchagin born? He was born on 14 October 1842 by the Old Style (Julian) calendar, which is 26 October 1842 in the modern calendar, in Cherepovets, Russia.

When did Vereshchagin visit India? He made two journeys, the first from late 1874 to 1876 and the second in 1882–83.

Where is Vereshchagin’s Prince of Wales painting? The State Procession of the Prince of Wales into Jaipur hangs in the Victoria Memorial Hall in Kolkata.

Why was Blowing from Guns in British India controversial? It depicted rebels executed by cannon in modern uniforms, which British critics said wrongly implied the 1857 punishment was still in use.

What else is Vereshchagin known for? His anti-war paintings, especially The Apotheosis of War (1871), and his series on Napoleon’s 1812 invasion of Russia.

Sources

AbirPothi Editor

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