1842 – 1904
Vasily Vereshchagin
War painter
A Russian painter who took part in the defence of Samarkand's citadel in 1868 and captured the city's streets, monuments and people of that era in his Turkestan Series.
© Not stated, Public domain
In the citadel of Samarkand
Vasily Vasilyevich Vereshchagin was born in Cherepovets in 1842. After the Naval Cadet Corps he chose art instead, studying at the Imperial Academy in St Petersburg and then in Paris under Jean-Léon Gérôme. In 1867 Konstantin von Kaufmann, Governor-General of Turkestan, invited him to join his staff as an artist with the rank of ensign.
In May 1868 Russian imperial troops occupied Samarkand. When the main force marched out, the citadel was besieged in early June by the armies of the Bukhara Emirate and the beks of Shahrisabz, joined by rebellious townspeople. Vereshchagin was among the small garrison that held the fortress from 2 to 8 June; he was wounded and awarded the Order of St George, fourth class.
The Turkestan Series
During his stay and a second journey in 1869 he made hundreds of studies and sketches: the Registan and Sher-Dor madrasa, the Gur-e-Amir, street scenes, dervishes, merchants and children. In his Munich studio in 1871–1873 these became the Turkestan Series — 13 large canvases, 81 studies and 133 drawings. It includes 'Let Them Enter!', set during the siege of Samarkand's citadel; 'The Doors of Tamerlane' (1872), with armed guards before richly carved doors; and the famous 'Apotheosis of War' (1871), a pyramid of skulls dedicated 'to all great conquerors, past, present and to come'.
Shown in London in 1873 and St Petersburg in 1874, the series drew charges of anti-patriotism for its unflinching view of war. Pavel Tretyakov bought the whole collection, now in Moscow's Tretyakov Gallery. Vereshchagin died in 1904, during the Russo-Japanese War, when the battleship Petropavlovsk struck a mine off Port Arthur.
