Vasily Vereshchagin

Vasily Vereshchagin was born in 1842 as a serf of Count Munnich. He showed an early talent for drawing and painting, and studied at the Imperial Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg. He became one of the most famous Russian war artists and one of the first Russian artists to be widely recognised abroad. The graphic nature of his realist scenes led to many of them never being printed or exhibited. He travelled extensively and witnessed many wars and conflicts, such as the Turkestan Campaign, the Russo-Turkish War, the Balkan Wars, and the Russo-Japanese War. He painted many scenes of battles, sieges, and atrocities, as well as portraits of soldiers and civilians. He also painted some landscapes and religious subjects. He was a pacifist and a critic of war, and his paintings often conveyed a message of anti-war and humanism. He died in 1904 from an explosion on a Russian battleship during the siege of Port Arthur in China. He is regarded as one of the most original and influential Russian painters of the 19th and early 20th centuries.