Vereshchagin V.V. Vereshchagin. Turkestan series Vereshchagin Turkestan series

Exactly 150 years ago, in 1867, immediately after the conquest of Turkestan by the tsarist troops, the young but already famous battle painter Vasily Vasilyevich Vereshchagin (1842-1904) accepted the invitation of the Turkestan Governor-General General K. P. Kaufman to be his secretary-artist . Vereshchagin agreed to go on a dangerous journey. In his autobiographical notes, he indicated the reason that pushed him on a dangerous journey: “I went because I wanted to know what true war about which I read and heard a lot ... ".

During the long journey from St. Petersburg to Tashkent in the south of the war-torn region, and later during numerous trips around Turkestan, Vereshchagin created hundreds of drawings and sketches depicting scenes from the life of the peoples of Central Asia, made sketches of cities and towns, fortresses and historical monuments. His albums depict the faces of Kazakhs, Uzbeks, Tajiks, Gypsies, Jews and other inhabitants of the vast region. So, on the banks of the Syr Darya, he created portraits of the Kazakhs and painted the ruins of the Kokand fortress Akmechet, recently blown up by the troops of V.A. Perovsky.

The artist agreed with Kaufman that he would not be given any ranks in the service, that he would keep his civilian clothes and receive the right to free movement around the region for sketches and sketches. However, life took a different course. Having stopped in Samarkand, occupied by the Russians, Vereshchagin began to study the life and life of the city.

But when the main troops under the command of Kaufman left Samarkand to further fight against the emir, the small garrison of the city was besieged by thousands of troops of the Shakhrisabz Khanate and the local population that joined it. The opponents outnumbered the Russian forces by almost eighty times. From their fire, the ranks of the courageous defenders of the Samarkand citadel were greatly thinned. The situation sometimes became simply catastrophic. Vereshchagin, having changed his pencil for a gun, joined the ranks of the defenders.

He participated in the defense of the fortress, more than once led the soldiers into hand-to-hand combat, conducted reconnaissance of the enemy with danger to his life, and went ahead everywhere. A bullet split his gun at chest level, another bullet knocked his hat off his head. A strong blow with a stone injured his leg. Courage, composure, diligence of the artist created for him a high prestige among the officers and soldiers of the detachment.

The besieged held out, the siege was finally lifted.

In the artist’s submission for the award, it is written as follows: “During the eight-day siege of the Samarkand citadel by the crowds of Bukharians, ensign Vereshchagin encouraged the garrison with a courageous example ... Despite the hail of stones and murderous rifle fire, with a gun in his hands, he rushed to storm the citadel and, with his heroic example, carried away the brave defenders ". The artist was awarded the Order of St. George. Later, he received several more awards, but he always wore only this one - combat.
For more than a year he followed the troops and painted from nature, mainly battle scenes, soldiers running into the attack, wounded, dying and already dead. However, despite the fact that V.V. Vereshchagin was a professional soldier (he graduated from the Naval Corps before the Academy of Arts), he only took part in military operations when absolutely necessary, as happened in Samarkand.

He, the artist, had a completely different task. Vasily Vasilyevich was in a hurry to convey on paper or on canvas his admiration for the beauty of southern nature, its steppes and river valleys, the lilac-blue haze of distant mountains.

He captured the images of local residents, the migration of a Kazakh family, elegant yurts, tents, camels and horses. But all battle pictures contain an angry protest against savagery, barbarism, cruelty, death of people, against darkness and ignorance, religious fanaticism and poverty.

A year later, with the assistance of K.P. Kaufman, an exhibition of battle paintings and drawings by V.V. Vereshchagin of the Turkestan cycle was organized in St. Petersburg and held with great success. For the first time, our Asia appeared on the artist's canvases in all its glory and contradictions.

Turkestan series made a stunning impression on his contemporaries. What Vereshchagin showed was new, original, unexpected: it was a whole unknown world, presented remarkably vividly in its truth and character.

After the closing of the exhibition, Vereshchagin again travels to Turkestan, but through Siberia. This time he made a trip to Semirechye and Western China.

Several well-known and now paintings are dedicated to Semirechye and Kyrgyzstan: “A rich Kyrgyz hunter with a falcon”, “Views of the mountains near the village of Lepsinskaya, the valley of the Chu River” (Shu), Lake Issyk-Kul, the snowy peaks of the Kyrgyz Range, Naryn in the Tien Shan. Dozens of sketches by Vereshchagin are now kept in the Museum of Ethnography in Moscow. They contain information about people who lived a century and a half ago on the territory of present-day Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.

Returning from Central Asia, he went to Germany and there, in his peaceful workshop, from memory and sketches he created the famous Turkestan series of famous battle paintings. Among them is the Apotheosis of War, the most famous one, familiar to us from childhood from reproductions in textbooks: a mountain of skulls against the backdrop of a destroyed city, black birds - a symbol of death - flying over them. The picture was created under the impression of stories about how the despot of Kashgar - Valikhan-Tore executed a European traveler and ordered his head to be placed on top of a pyramid made of the skulls of other executed people. The inscription on the frame reads: "Dedicated to all the great conquerors - past, present and future."

The anti-war paintings by VV Vereshchagin were a huge success at several exhibitions held in Europe and Russia. But in the spring of 1874, after the exhibition in St. Petersburg, a scandal erupted: Vereshchagin was accused of anti-patriotism and sympathy for the enemy. And all because Emperor Alexander II, who got acquainted with Vereshchagin’s canvases, as the newspapers wrote then, “expressed his displeasure very sharply,” and the heir, the future Emperor Alexander III, generally said: “His constant tendentiousness is contrary to national pride, and one can conclude from them one thing: either Vereshchagin is a beast, or a completely crazy person. Of course, at that time it was customary to "impose" peace by force of arms, but showed the disgusting face of war. Such "displeasure" of the first persons of the country often sound like a call for persecution not only here. Criticism and gossip fell upon Vereshchagin. The artist closed himself in his studio and even destroyed several of his paintings. When, just a month later, the Imperial Academy of Arts awarded Vereshchagin the title of professor, he refused to accept it. For this he was declared a rebel, a nihilist and a revolutionary.

Traveling around the world, he always kept diaries - "Notes". He published 12 books, many articles, both in domestic and foreign press. In them, V.V. Vereshchagin described his views on art, as well as the customs and customs of the countries where he visited. And he traveled half the world and created several series of paintings about the Russian-Turkish war, where he highlighted the events in Bulgaria. For two years he traveled around India, where the British colonialists then raged, visited the countries of Southeast Asia, Egypt and the Arab countries. Vereshchagin saw and experienced the terrible disasters and horrors of several wars, memories of which haunted him like a nightmare for many years. He was wounded several times, lost his health, lost his younger brother. And some military men fell upon him with accusations that he had too thickened the tragic sides in his paintings, for example, the Russian-Turkish war. The artist replied that he did not depict even a tenth of what he personally observed in reality. Later he will create other series of real masterpieces. But the Turkestan series of works by VV Vereshchagin was the first and most famous in his work. It's not just about the war. He devoted many pages in the Notes, drawings and three large paintings to another "great conqueror of Asia", who claimed almost more lives than battles - drugs.

Although after the exhibition in Paris, the young immediately became famous, oddly enough, two paintings brought him special fame, the plots of which seem to fall out of military theme. There are no military operations, no bloody scenes, no corpses, no severed heads, no skulls, no crows. But the people depicted on them are very similar to corpses.

Two paintings made a stunning impression on Parisians - Opium Eaters (1868) and Politicians in an Opium Shop. Tashkent" (1870). They caused a scandal, which made Vereshchagin even more famous.

The world of Turkestan was then completely unknown in Europe, and drugs in France were considered a pleasant and harmless pastime. Opium and the strongest wormwood drink absinthe, which causes hallucinations, were then considered in Europe as signs of exclusivity, inherent only to aristocrats and creative people. This potion was considered a reliable painkiller, an easy remedy for alcoholism. Opium was given at the slightest toothache and headache as a sedative and with binges, so that a person would stop drinking. And the fact that he soon became a drug addict was somehow not noticed. He's not violent anymore! Some researchers still believe that many of the Impressionist paintings were painted by them in a state of mild drug intoxication. You can't create anything under the strong one. Then drugs were sung in novels and poems, which attracted new people who wanted to join the clan of special people. The opium craze came from China. The "queen of the seas" England also brought drugs from India. Bohemia - famous artists, artists, writers, poets - created closed clubs for opium lovers.

In them, a select society plunged into narcotic hallucinations, and then shared their impressions. Such a club of opium smokers was described in one of the stories by Conan Doyle. His favorite hero Sherlock Holmes "on business", investigating yet another case, finds himself in an opium smokehouse - in a den of the same "opium-eaters" that Vereshchagin described.

And in the story there is not a word about the danger of such a hobby. Everything is quiet there, it smells. Everything is so exquisite!

And here is an excerpt from an article in the Parisian magazine Light and Shadows (1879), glorifying the drug: “It lies before you: a piece of green mastic, the size of a walnut, emitting an unpleasant, nauseating smell. Therein lies happiness, happiness with all its extravagances. Swallow without fear - you don't die from it! Your body will not suffer in the slightest from this. You don't risk anything..."

Well, after that, how not to try the Chinese "happiness"!

And suddenly the Russian shows a gloomy den, drugged by a potion of people in outlandish clothes ... Are they really akin to exquisite Parisian bohemia ?!

One painting at an exhibition in Paris was immediately banned, but many European newspapers managed to reproduce it many times, and, having already been removed from the exhibition, it also made a fuss in St. Petersburg. Everyone wanted to see her.

Before Turkestan, Vereshchagin himself knew that there were drugs, but in Russia they were not yet as widespread as in Turkestan. And there he lived in Samarkand, Tashkent, Kokand, visited among the nomads in the Kyrgyz steppes, studied the mores, traditions and customs of the eastern peoples, sometimes quite cruel. For Vereshchagin, the East was the discovery of a new world - fascinating, unusual. However, he also saw a terrible thing: opium takes the lives of people, like the most ferocious conqueror.

The artist was a very attentive observer and also a fighter for social justice. He simply could not help but pay attention to the destructive addiction of the Central Asian inhabitants to opium. When he first saw the “opium eaters” in person, Vereshchagin was shocked: “They used drugs to replace alcohol, which in the East, due to cultural and religious traditions, was not very common,” he wrote. Here is how the artist himself tells about his impressions in his memoirs. “When I came once on a rather cold day to the calendarkhan (to the den), I found a picture that crashed into my memory: a whole company of opium-eaters sat along the walls, all crouching like monkeys, clinging to one another; most of them have probably recently taken a dose of opium; a dull expression on their faces; the half-open mouths of some move as if they are whispering something; many, with their heads buried in their knees, breathe heavily, occasionally twitching with convulsions. Near the bazaar there are many kennels in which sofas (dervishes), opium eaters, live. These are small, dark, dirty closets full of various rubbish and insects. In some, kuknar is cooked, and then the closet takes on the appearance of a drinking shop, constantly having visitors; some, having drunk in moderation, leave safely, others, less moderate, fall off their feet and sleep side by side in dark corners. Kuknar is a very stupefying drink made from the husks of the common poppy ... ”Vereshchagin tells in detail how kuknar is prepared. We will not distribute this recipe.

The artist assesses the drink in this way: “The bitterness of kuknar is so unpleasant that I could never swallow it, although I was treated to friendly sofas more than once. In similar kennels, shops are set up for smoking opium; such a closet is all covered and upholstered with mats - and the floor, and the walls, and the ceiling; the smoker lies down and draws from the hookah the smoke from the burning ball of opium, which is held with small tweezers by others at the hole of the hookah. The stupefaction from smoking opium is almost stronger than from taking it inside; its action can be compared with the action of tobacco, but only in a much stronger degree; like tobacco, it takes away sleep, natural, restorative sleep; but, they say, he gives waking dreams, restless dreams, fleeting, hallucinations, followed by weakness and frustration, but pleasant.

It was this impression that he reflected in the painting "Opium Eaters". Banned in Paris, it became known in St. Petersburg from copies and postcards. About her began to talk in the art world.

The well-known critic V. Stasov then wrote: “With sculptural tangibility, the dirty corner of the brothel is conveyed in the picture and the figures of its mendicant visitors are depicted. All these unfortunate ragamuffins, desperate poor people, barely covered with miserable rags, exposing a body parched by poverty and vice. Six warped by life and destitute people reached the brothel by different roads, through various sorrows and sufferings, but all of them were brought here by the desire, at least with the help of poison, to forget the bleak reality ... "

Another scandalous picture “Politicians in an opium shop. Tashkent” appeared as a result of the artist’s second trip to Turkestan. At this time, V.V. Vereshchagin paints several small sketches depicting the types of Central Asian beggars, which, in addition to Politicians, include Beggars in Samarkand, Chorus of Dervishes Begging for Alms, Dervishes (duvans) in festive attire. These paintings-etudes can be recognized as documentary accurate. At first glance, they represent a simple sketch of urban customs. In fact, everything is more complicated here. The artist noticed the mass nature of poverty and the connection of poverty with an attempt to illusory escape from it - the tragedy of drug addiction. The artist wrote: “Almost all sofas are noteworthy drunkards, almost all opium-eaters ... I once fed one whole stick ... opium and I will not forget with what greed he swallowed, I will not forget the whole figure, the whole appearance of the opium-eater: tall, utterly pale, yellow, he looked more like a skeleton than a living person; he hardly heard what was being done and said around him, day and night he dreamed only of opium. At first he did not pay attention to what I said to him, did not answer and probably did not hear; but then he saw opium in my hands - suddenly his face cleared up, until then meaningless, got an expression: his eyes opened wide, his nostrils flared, he stretched out his hand and began to whisper: give, give ... I did not give at first, I hid the opium - then the skeleton this one all came in, began to break down, grimace like a child, and kept begging me: give me a bang, give me a bang! .. (beng is opium). When I finally gave him a piece, he grabbed it in both hands and, crouching against his wall, began to gnaw it slowly, with pleasure, closing his eyes as a dog gnaws at a tasty bone.

He had already gnawed off half of it, when an opium-eater sitting next to him, who had long been looking enviously at the preference I had given to the skeleton, suddenly tore out the rest from him and in one second put it in his mouth. What happened to the poor skeleton? He rushed at his comrade, knocked him down and began to pull in every possible way, frantically saying: “Give it back, give it back, I say!”

“Kalendarkhans are shelters for the poor, as well as a cross between our cafe-restaurant and a club ... There are always a lot of people there, chatting, smoking, drinking and sleeping. I happened to meet quite respectable people there, who, however, seemed to be ashamed that I, a Russian Tyura (master), found them in the company of opium eaters and kuknarchs.

V.V. Vereshchagin, with his paintings and Notes, realistically showed the poverty and wretchedness of those who were accustomed to opium. The artist did not romanticize or idealize this vice, as it was then in Europe. He looked into the water when he warned: “It can hardly be doubted that in a more or less long time opium will come into use in Europe; behind tobacco, behind those drugs that are now absorbed in tobacco, opium is naturally and inevitably next in line.

But even the wise and insightful Vasily Vasilyevich did not imagine what a tragedy the spread of drugs would turn out to be for the peoples of Asia and Europe.

He, and the writer, with all his heart rooting for the people, tried to prevent the danger that was approaching the world with the power of his talent. But who listens to the most reasonable warnings!

Sometimes, in a polemic heat, modern debaters begin to reproach each other, who was the first to bring the evil of drug addiction or alcoholism to our region. Pointless activity! The answer to this question was given as early as the 19th century.

Back in 1885, by order of the governor of the Turkestan region A.K. Abramov, the scientist S. Moravitsky conducted a special study on the spread of drugs in the "new territories" - in Turkestan. Even then, doctors reported with alarm that "the indigenous population instilled hashishism in the newcomer, and the latter instilled alcohol in the native."

Officers, cartographers, scientists, making official trips, reported to the higher authorities, and some to the king himself, "curious facts", such as, for example, about the supply of opium to our region by Chinese merchants. Scouts believed: “for 20 million Muslim population (1880), there were up to 800 thousand consumers of hashish alone. And this number was considered underestimated. Understanding the seriousness of the problem, Emperor Nicholas II, on July 7, 1915, approved the Law "On measures to combat opium smoking." It was ordered to destroy poppy crops, which caused protests from his sowers. And this was during the First World War! What happened next and where Emperor Nicholas II disappeared, I believe, everyone knows. Many countries came to the fight against drugs in the 20s of the twentieth century, but we are witnesses to those who are now winning this fight. This deadly business for humanity is very profitable for someone!

The life of Vasily Vasilyevich Vereshchagin himself, one might say, a pioneer on the path full of danger in the fight against drugs, was tragic. Having visited all the hot spots of that time, creating hundreds of anti-war works, with the beginning of the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-1905. went to his last war - to the Far East. K. Simonov wrote about the fate of the artist: “All his life he loved to draw war. On a starless night, having run into a mine, He, together with the ship, went to the bottom, Without finishing the last picture ... ". He died along with Admiral S.O. Makarov during the explosion of the battleship Petropavlovsk near Port Arthur.

And another fantastic fact. In 1912, Vereshchagin's paintings were supposed to go to an exhibition in America ... on the Titanic, but the organizers did not manage to complete the necessary documents, and the paintings remained in the port until the next flight. Fate?

And below you can get acquainted with the works (not only with the Turkestan series) of this brilliant painter.

06.08.2008 Category: Uncategorized Tags: 1 590 views

It is difficult to overestimate the importance of the Turkestan series for the representation and understanding of that time, already distant for us, when photography was just beginning its journey into history. After all, in those distant times, everything historical events fixed only with a pen and brush. Thanks to the picturesque works of V. Vereshchagin, we can now see people who lived in the 19th century, as well as the architecture of the old Tashkent and Samarkand. Have a real idea about the ethnic group of the peoples who inhabited Turkestan.

Vasily Vereshchagin. Turkestan series

Vereshchagin participated in the campaign of Russian troops led by Kaufman in the conquest of Central Asia.In June 1868, as part of a small Russian garrison, Vereshchagin took part in the defense of the Samarkand fortress from the troops of the Emir of Bukhara, for which he was awarded the Order of St. George, 4th degree, which was awarded for special military merits. It was the only award accepted by the artist. Returning from Turkestan, Vereshchagin settled in Munich in 1871, where he continued to work on Turkestan subjects on the basis of sketches and brought collections. In its final form, the Turkestan series included thirteen paintings, eighty-one studies and one hundred and thirty-three drawings - in this composition it was shown at Vereshchagin's first solo exhibition in London in 1873, and then in 1874 in St. Petersburg and Moscow.

What Vereshchagin showed in the Turkestan series was new, original, unexpected: it was a whole unknown world, presented remarkably vividly in its truth and character. The colors and the novelty of the painting were amazing, a technique not similar to the technique of Russian contemporaries, which seemed inexplicable in a young amateur artist who had been seriously engaged in painting for only a few years. For many of the artists (including Perov, Chistyakov, and at first Repin), the Turkestan series seemed foreign and even alien in Russian art, “colored patches” on his strict clothes, but the opinion expressed by Kramskoy : The Turkestan series is a brilliant success of the new Russian school, its unconditional achievement, "highly raising the spirit of the Russian person", making the heart beat "with pride that Vereshchagin is Russian, completely Russian."

The success of the Turkestan series in Russia, as already noted, was enormous. “In my opinion, this is an event. This is the conquest of Russia, much greater than the conquest of Kaufman. sums up public opinion Kramskoy… Moscow collector P.M. Tretyakov, bought the Turkestan series in 1874 ... and opened it to the general public, first in the premises of the Moscow Society of Art Lovers, and then, after the addition of new halls specifically for the Vereshchagin series, in his gallery.

Vereshchagin is endowed with an amazing, in his words, "a downright terrible memory of the past", which firmly held the smallest details of what he saw and allowed him to return to them many years later. Having moved to Munich, he continues to write Turkestan sketches and paintings. He works with sitters, checks every detail with authentic costumes, weapons, and utensils brought from Turkestan, but he does a lot from memory. The artist does not bring anything "from himself". His task is to achieve adequacy between what he writes and what appears to his inner gaze, to prevent "double-mindedness", according to Stasov's expression, between reality, as it lives in his memory, and a picturesque image ...

On August 22, 1867, V.V. Vereshchagin was enrolled as an ensign in the service of the Turkestan Governor-General K.P. von Kaufmann and sent to the regions of Central Asia annexed to Russia. The artist made two trips to Turkestan: in 1867-1868 and 1869-1870. Here he created many drawings and pictorial sketches from nature, despite the difficult travel conditions, as well as the distrust of the Uzbeks and Kazakhs to the foreigner "kafir".

They triumph. 1872

He kept a detailed travel diary, collected ethnographic and zoological collections, spent small archaeological excavations. In Turkestan essays, the artist wrote about the need for careful attitude to ancient architectural monuments, "between which many wonderful examples have survived." He sent correspondence to the newspaper "Sankt-Peterburgskiye Vedomosti", in which he described the deplorable state of Samarkand mosques, trying to draw the attention of the Russian public to this problem*.

In addition to cursory sketches, the artist wrote sketches oil paints, allowing you to convey with a brush the feeling of sultry hot air, the southern blue sky and the spring greens of the steppes. It is surprising that canvases, bright in color, as if saturated with the warmth of the sun, created on the basis of sketches brought from the first trip to Turkestan, were written in the workshop in late 1868 - early 1869 under the cold winter illumination of the Parisian sky. After the second trip, Vereshchagin worked already in Munich, in the studio inherited from the German painter Theodor Gorschelt, as well as in the country studio built by Vereshchagin in 1871 to work in the open air. In Asian campaigns, moving under the scorching rays of the southern sun, Vereshchagin discovered a bright dazzling light, sculpturally emphasizing the volume, enhancing the texture, revealing sharp colored shadows. These effects of solar lighting have become one of the main artistic techniques, helped Vereshchagin to reveal himself as a painter. P.M. Tretyakov wrote about the work "Dervishes in holiday clothes" in 1870, that "... was amazed by the sunlight poured over the entire picture, and the virtuosity of the letter"**.

The coloring in Vereshchagin's Turkestan paintings was built on dense, rich color relationships and resembled the decorative pattern of an oriental carpet. A Kyrgyz woman in a high snow-white turban sitting lightly on a horse, an Uzbek selling ceramic utensils, dark-skinned children from the Solon tribe playing in the field, a stately Afghan in full military ammunition , ancient elders in white turbans - colorful oriental characters appeared before the artist in a sultry atmosphere, under a direct stream of sunlight against a bright cobalt blue sky. The specific features of each ethnic type, the characteristic details of national clothes, jewelry, and weapons are conveyed with documentary accuracy. The Kyrgyz hunter posed for the artist in a smart dressing gown (chapan), tucked into wide trousers (harem pants) as usual and tied with a folded scarf-belt (belbag), in a white headdress decorated with colored fields (kalpak), with a gun hanging behind his back (karamultuk) ***. The heroes of Vereshchagin's paintings were wandering dervishes (duvans) encountered in Uzbek bazaars. Some of them attracted attention in the bazaars with loud prayerful singing and exclamations, while others, on the contrary, silently glorified God, immersed in a meditative state. Vereshchagin penetrated stuffy opium shops, descended into the underground prison zindan, and witnessed the scene of the sale of a slave child. All observations of the unusual life of the "natives", as Vereshchagin called them, were accumulated for the sharp plots of future paintings.

Perhaps, only one work stands out among the genre paintings of the Turkestan series - this is "The Doors of Timur (Tamerlane)" in 1872, which in meaning approaches historical picture. In the center of the composition there are doors decorated with thick ornaments, which create a feeling of stability and majesty of the eastern world order as opposed to dynamics. European civilization. Closed doors are a collective image of the East, which does not allow foreign invasion of the world ancient culture. Frozen guards in bright, detailed national clothes and full ammunition guard the peace of their master. They are perceived as ancient symbols of Eastern life.

The main reason that prompted Vereshchagin to go to Turkestan was a passionate desire to find out what a real war is. "I imagined ... that the war is a kind of parade, with music and fluttering sultans. With banners and the roar of cannons, with galloping horses, with great pomp and little danger: for the setting, of course, a few dying..."****. The seen human suffering, cruelty, barbarism, death of people, physical and mental pain completely changed his ideas about the war. Vereshchagin took up his rifle and fearlessly fought shoulder to shoulder with the Russian soldiers, leaving his main "weapon" - a brush and a pencil. Despite the young age of the artist, the officers respectfully addressed him as "Vasily Vasilyevich", the soldiers nicknamed him "Vyruchagin". For his courage in battle, Vereshchagin was awarded the Order of St. George IV degree "In retribution for the distinction rendered during the defense of the citadel of Samarkand, from June 2 to June 8, 1868" from the attack of the troops of the Emir of Bukhara. It was the only award accepted by the artist in his entire life.

"Terrible pictures of a real war" shocked the audience with bloody plots and merciless bitter truth, they went beyond the official battlefield and presented the war as the greatest common tragedy of both the winners and the vanquished. The true hero of the war at Vereshchagin was a Russian soldier, but not a winner with a banner in his hands, but a wounded one, looking death in the face ("Mortally wounded", 1873, Tretyakov Gallery). The Russian and European spectators, with excitement and confusion, studied the scene of the death of Russian soldiers surrounded, with disgust and fear examined the severed heads, impaled on poles in the form of trophies or lying under the feet of the shah. The now famous painting "The Apotheosis of War" (1871, State Tretyakov Gallery) is an epilogue to a "heroic poem", where a specific plot acquires the properties of a metaphor and evokes an apocalyptic mood. Vereshchagin clearly managed to show what death is and what is the result of any war: a pyramid made of human skulls with open mouths forever frozen in a terrifying scream looks worse than hundreds of soldiers killed on the battlefield.

Such plots seemed to contemporaries unpatriotic, paradoxical, incomprehensible and involuntarily forced to think about the methods of the colonial policy of any state. These "truth-breathing plots", as the St. Petersburg newspapers wrote during Vereshchagin's first solo exhibition in Russia in 1874, caused a number of critical articles accusing him of betrayal and a "Turkmenist" view of events. The offended Vereshchagin destroyed three canvases of the series as a sign of protest, which caused especially fierce attacks ("At the fortress wall. Entered" 1871, "Surrounded - persecuted ..." and "Forgotten" 1871).

In its final form, the Turkestan series included several dozen paintings, many sketches and more than a hundred drawings. She exhibited at the first personal exhibition of Vereshchagin in London in 1873, the next year - in St. Petersburg and Moscow. Exhibition catalogs noted that the artist's works were not for sale. Vereshchagin intended to preserve the integrity of the entire series with the indispensable condition of being in Russia. The Turkestan series by Vereshchagin demonstrated the new successes of the Russian school, especially in the field of the battle genre, and aroused great interest among the Western artistic world. At home, Vereshchagin's paintings not only surprised with the technique of execution and innovative interpretation of the plots, but also provoked a wave of discussions in society on the topic of the colonial East and Russian orientalism. For some, the "Asian" paintings of the artist seemed to be an alien phenomenon in Russian art, but for the majority they were "things really original and amazing in many respects ... uplifting the spirit of a Russian person." The artist Ivan Kramskoy summed up these considerations by defining Vereshchagin's art as "an event ... the conquest of Russia, much more than the conquest of Kaufman."

The Turkestan series was acquired almost in its entirety by P.M. Tretyakov with the financial support of his brother. However, her fate was decided for a long time, and Vereshchagin was already in a hurry to new travels and impressions. In April 1874 he left for India for two years.

To be continued…

* Vereshchagin V.V. From a journey through Central Asia // Vereshchagin V.V. Essays, sketches, memoirs. SPb., 1883

** Letter from P.M. Tretyakova V.V. Stasov dated February 13, 1882 // Correspondence of P.M. Tretyakov and V.V. Stasov. 1874 1897. P.65)

*** The Russian name for the weapon is the pishchal. According to the memoirs of the artist's son, also Vasily Vasilievich Vereshchagin (1892-1981), "a large, unusually heavy arquebus" hung in the artist's Moscow studio in Nizhniye Kotly in the collection of weapons, among Caucasian daggers, checkers, steel chain mail and Turkish scimitars. V.V. Vereshchagin. Memoirs of the artist's son. L., 1978. P.45

**** Conversation with V.V. Vereshchagin // St. Petersburg Vedomosti, 1900. May 6 (19) No. 132.

curator of museum objects of the 1st category of the Department of Painting of the 2nd half of XIX- beginning of the 20th century, exhibition curated by V.V. Vereshchagin

They triumph. 1872

He kept a detailed travel diary, collected ethnographic and zoological collections, and carried out small archaeological excavations. In Turkestan essays, the artist wrote about the need for careful attitude to ancient architectural monuments, "between which many wonderful examples have survived." He sent correspondence to the newspaper "Sankt-Peterburgskiye Vedomosti", in which he described the deplorable state of Samarkand mosques, trying to draw the attention of the Russian public to this problem*.

In addition to cursory sketches, the artist painted sketches with oil paints, allowing him to convey with a brush the feeling of sultry hot air, the southern blue sky and the spring greens of the steppes. It is surprising that canvases, bright in color, as if saturated with the warmth of the sun, created on the basis of sketches brought from the first trip to Turkestan, were written in the workshop in late 1868 - early 1869 under the cold winter illumination of the Parisian sky. After the second trip, Vereshchagin worked already in Munich, in the studio inherited from the German painter Theodor Gorschelt, as well as in the country studio built by Vereshchagin in 1871 to work in the open air. In Asian campaigns, moving under the scorching rays of the southern sun, Vereshchagin discovered a bright dazzling light, sculpturally emphasizing the volume, enhancing the texture, revealing sharp colored shadows. These solar lighting effects became one of the main artistic techniques, helping Vereshchagin to reveal himself as a painter. P.M. Tretyakov wrote about the work "Dervishes in holiday clothes" in 1870, that "... was amazed by the sunlight poured over the entire picture, and the virtuosity of the letter"**.

Perhaps, only one work stands out among the genre paintings of the Turkestan series - this is "The Doors of Timur (Tamerlane)" in 1872, which in meaning approaches a historical painting. In the center of the composition are doors decorated with dense ornamentation, which create a feeling of stability and majesty of the eastern world order as opposed to the dynamics of European civilization. Closed doors are a collective image of the East, which does not allow foreign intrusion into the world of ancient culture. Frozen guards in bright, detailed national clothes and with full ammunition guard the rest of their master. They are perceived as ancient symbols of Eastern life.

In its final form, the Turkestan series included several dozen paintings, many sketches and more than a hundred drawings. She exhibited at the first personal exhibition of Vereshchagin in London in 1873, the next year - in St. Petersburg and Moscow. Exhibition catalogs noted that the artist's works were not for sale. Vereshchagin intended to preserve the integrity of the entire series with the indispensable condition of being in Russia. The Turkestan series by Vereshchagin demonstrated the new successes of the Russian school, especially in the field of the battle genre, and aroused great interest among the Western art world. At home, Vereshchagin's paintings not only surprised with the technique of execution and innovative interpretation of the plots, but also provoked a wave of discussions in society on the topic of the colonial East and Russian orientalism. For some, the "Asian" paintings of the artist seemed to be an alien phenomenon in Russian art, but for the majority they were "things really original and amazing in many respects ... uplifting the spirit of a Russian person." The artist Ivan Kramskoy summed up these considerations by defining Vereshchagin's art as "an event ... the conquest of Russia, much more than the conquest of Kaufman."

To be continued…

* Vereshchagin V.V. From a journey through Central Asia // Vereshchagin V.V. Essays, sketches, memoirs. SPb., 1883

** Letter from P.M. Tretyakova V.V. Stasov dated February 13, 1882 // Correspondence of P.M. Tretyakov and V.V. Stasov. 1874 1897. P.65)

**** Conversation with V.V. Vereshchagin // St. Petersburg Vedomosti, 1900. May 6 (19) No. 132.

curator of museum objects of the 1st category of the Department of Painting of the second half of the 19th - early 20th centuries, curator of the exhibition V.V. Vereshchagin

Exactly 150 years ago, in 1867, immediately after the conquest of Turkestan by the tsarist troops, the young but already famous battle painter Vasily Vasilyevich Vereshchagin (1842-1904) accepted the invitation of the Turkestan Governor-General General K. P. Kaufman to be his secretary-artist . Vereshchagin agreed to go on a dangerous journey. In his autobiographical notes, he indicated the reason that pushed him on a dangerous journey: "I went because I wanted to find out what a true war is, about which I read and heard a lot ...".

The besieged held out, the siege was finally lifted.

In the artist’s submission for the award, it is written as follows: “During the eight-day siege of the Samarkand citadel by the crowds of Bukharians, ensign Vereshchagin encouraged the garrison with a courageous example ... Despite the hail of stones and murderous rifle fire, with a gun in his hands, he rushed to storm the citadel and, with his heroic example, carried away the brave defenders ". The artist was awarded the Order of St. George. Later, he received several more awards, but he always wore only this one - combat.

For more than a year, the artist followed the troops and painted from nature, mainly battle scenes, soldiers running into the attack, wounded, dying and already dead. However, despite the fact that V.V. Vereshchagin was a professional soldier (he graduated from the Naval Corps before the Academy of Arts), he only took part in military operations when absolutely necessary, as happened in Samarkand.

The Turkestan series made a stunning impression on contemporaries. What Vereshchagin showed was new, original, unexpected: it was a whole unknown world, presented remarkably vividly in its truth and character.

After the closing of the exhibition, Vereshchagin again travels to Turkestan, but through Siberia. This time the artist made a trip to Semirechye and Western China.

Returning from Central Asia, the artist went to Germany and there, in his peaceful workshop, from memory and sketches, he created the famous Turkestan series of famous battle paintings. Among them is the Apotheosis of War, the most famous one, familiar to us from childhood from reproductions in textbooks: a mountain of skulls against the backdrop of a destroyed city, black birds - a symbol of death - flying over them. The picture was created under the impression of stories about how the despot of Kashgar - Valikhan-Tore executed a European traveler and ordered his head to be placed on top of a pyramid made of the skulls of other executed people. The inscription on the frame reads: "Dedicated to all the great conquerors - past, present and future."

The anti-war paintings by VV Vereshchagin were a huge success at several exhibitions held in Europe and Russia. But in the spring of 1874, after the exhibition in St. Petersburg, a scandal erupted: Vereshchagin was accused of anti-patriotism and sympathy for the enemy. And all because Emperor Alexander II, who got acquainted with Vereshchagin’s canvases, as the newspapers wrote then, “expressed his displeasure very sharply,” and the heir, the future Emperor Alexander III, generally said: “His constant tendentiousness is contrary to national pride, and one can conclude from them one thing: either Vereshchagin is a beast, or a completely crazy person. Of course, at that time it was customary to "impose" peace by force of arms, and the artist showed the disgusting face of war. Such "displeasure" of the first persons of the country often sound like a call for persecution not only here. Criticism and gossip fell upon Vereshchagin. The artist closed himself in his studio and even destroyed several of his paintings. When, just a month later, the Imperial Academy of Arts awarded Vereshchagin the title of professor, he refused to accept it. For this he was declared a rebel, a nihilist and a revolutionary.

Traveling around the world, the artist always kept diaries - "Notes". He published 12 books, many articles, both in domestic and foreign press. In them, V.V. Vereshchagin described his views on art, as well as the customs and customs of the countries where he visited. And he traveled half the world and created several series of paintings about the Russian-Turkish war, where he highlighted the events in Bulgaria. For two years he traveled around India, where the British colonialists then raged, visited the countries of Southeast Asia, Egypt and the Arab countries. Vereshchagin saw and experienced the terrible disasters and horrors of several wars, memories of which haunted him like a nightmare for many years. He was wounded several times, lost his health, lost his younger brother. And some military men fell upon him with accusations that he had too thickened the tragic sides in his paintings, for example, the Russian-Turkish war. The artist replied that he did not depict even a tenth of what he personally observed in reality. Later he will create other series of real masterpieces. But the Turkestan series of works by VV Vereshchagin was the first and most famous in his work. It's not just about the war. The artist devoted many pages in the “Notes”, drawings and three large paintings to another “great conqueror of Asia”, who claimed almost more lives than battles - drugs.

Although after the exhibition in Paris, the young artist immediately became famous, oddly enough, two paintings brought him special fame, the plots of which seem to fall out of the military theme. There are no military operations, no bloody scenes, no corpses, no severed heads, no skulls, no crows. But the people depicted on them are very similar to corpses.

Two paintings made a stunning impression on Parisians - Opium Eaters (1868) and Politicians in an Opium Shop. Tashkent" (1870). They caused a scandal, which made Vereshchagin even more famous.

And in the story there is not a word about the danger of such a hobby. Everything is quiet there, it smells. Everything is so exquisite!

Well, after that, how not to try the Chinese "happiness"!

And suddenly a Russian artist shows a gloomy brothel, people drugged with a potion in outlandish clothes ... Are they really akin to an exquisite Parisian bohemia?!

Before Turkestan, Vereshchagin himself knew that there were drugs, but in Russia they were not yet as widespread as in Turkestan. And there he lived in Samarkand, Tashkent, Kokand, visited among the nomads in the Kyrgyz steppes, studied the mores, traditions and customs of the eastern peoples, sometimes quite cruel. For Vereshchagin, the East was the discovery of a new world - fascinating, unusual. However, the artist also saw a terrible thing: opium takes the lives of people, like the most ferocious conqueror.

It was this impression that the artist reflected in the painting Opium Eaters. Banned in Paris, it became known in St. Petersburg from copies and postcards. About her began to talk in the art world.

But even the wise and insightful Vasily Vasilyevich did not imagine what a tragedy the spread of drugs would turn out to be for the peoples of Asia and Europe.

He, an artist and writer, rooting for the people with all his heart, tried to prevent the danger that was approaching the world with the power of his talent. But who listens to the most reasonable warnings!

The life of Vasily Vasilyevich Vereshchagin himself, one might say, a pioneer on the path full of danger in the fight against drugs, was tragic. Having visited all the hot spots of that time, creating hundreds of anti-war works, with the beginning of the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-1905. the artist went to his last war - to the Far East. K. Simonov wrote about the fate of the artist: “All his life he loved to draw war. On a starless night, having run into a mine, He, together with the ship, went to the bottom, Without finishing the last picture ... ". He died along with Admiral S.O. Makarov during the explosion of the battleship Petropavlovsk near Port Arthur.

Antonina KAZIMIRCHIK