A couple of weeks ago, I showed some of the paintings made by Vasily Vasilyevich Vereshchagin (1842–1904) as a war artist. While he’s best known for those, he also travelled widely, throughout Europe and Asia. This article shows a small selection of the paintings that he brought back from those travels.

Following his training in Paris under the arch-Realist Jean-Léon Gérôme, he went to the latest part of the Russian Empire, its newly conquered state of Russian Turkestan. He then returned to Europe, only to go back to Turkestan in 1869, when he was able to paint more peaceful views.

Madrasah Shir-Dhor at Registan in Samarkand (1869-70) shows a renowned educational institution with what must be some of the grandest premises, apparently founded and constructed in 1619. The building has since been extensively restored.

He was off again in late 1874, on an extensive tour of the Himalaya and the Indian sub-continent.

Rajnagar. Marble Embankment Decorated with Bas-Reliefs on a Lake in Udaipur (1874) shows one of the palaces in Udaipur, in Rajasthan, India. This city is surrounded by seven lakes, several of which have palaces on the shore.

Taj Mahal Mausoleum, Agra (1874-76) shows this famous white marble mausoleum in the Indian city of Agra, built to house the tomb of the Mughal emperor’s favourite wife, Mumtaz Mahal, between 1632-1653. It’s probably the most painted and photographed building in the whole of the sub-continent.

Vereshchagin returned to Europe in late 1876, where he turned some of his studies into more substantial finished paintings.

Many of Vereshchagin’s travel paintings are surprisingly small, either completed in front of the motif or in an improvised local studio. This huge painting of the Pearl Mosque, Delhi from 1876-79 must have been made entirely in his studio in Paris. The Moti Masjid is built from white marble, and is inside the Red Fort complex in Delhi, India. It was constructed by the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb for his second wife and the ladies of the household, in 1659-60.

When he returned to Europe after the Russo-Turkish War, he painted prolifically in his studio in Munich. He was back in India in 1882-83, toured Syria and Palestine in 1884, then in the late 1880s painted several controversial works.

One of those is his Crucifixion in the Time of the Romans from 1887, which is smaller than the previous work, but still a large painting by any standards. This is an unusual treatment of one of the standards of Christian religious painting, whose crowd includes some dressed in contemporary religious garb.

In 1887-88, Vereshchagin decided to reconnect with his own country, and embarked on a painting tour of Yaroslavl, Rostov, Kostroma and Makarev. He additionally intended to paint and document “unremarkable Russian people” in their surroundings.

He painted this Provincial Russian Church during that tour, apparently in front of the motif.

The Icon Screen of Ishnya Church, Rostov (1888) shows the Church of Saint John the Theologian on the Ishnya River, near the city of Rostov, to the north-east of Moscow. After the 1917 Revolution, this ‘iconostasis’ was replaced by a replica, and the original removed to the Rostov Kremlin museum.

Entrance Door to the Ipatiev Cathedral at Kostroma, painted before 1891, shows a decorated doorway in the Ipatiev Monastery on the Kostroma River, opposite the city of Kostroma. Dedicated to Saint Hypatios of Gangra, the monastery was founded in about 1330. After the 1917 Revolution, it was disbanded and turned into a museum, but in 1991 was returned to the Russian Orthodox Church.

In the late 1890s, Vereshchagin travelled round the north coast of the Black Sea, visiting Crimea and Georgia.

View of the Crimean Mountains (1880-1901) shows this rugged chain of mountains, rising to over 1,500 metres (5,000 feet) just inland of the south-east coast of Crimea, Ukraine.

Cape Fiolent near Sevastopol from 1897 shows the spectacularly cliffed coastline to the south of Sevastopol in Crimea, Ukraine.

Mount Kazbek from 1898 shows one of the highest peaks in the Caucasus Mountains, also known as Mount Kazbegi. This is on the modern border between Georgia and Russia, and is here seen from the south at dawn. The rocky road is, I believe, the Georgian Military Road that leads up to the Dariel Pass. The mountain is a dormant volcano, and reaches a peak of 5,054 metres (16,581 feet). Curiously, this painting is now in the Ukrainian city of Lviv.

He went to east Asia during the First Sino-Japanese War in 1894-95, was in Manchuria during the Boxer Rebellion in 1900, then visited the Philippines, the US and Cuba, and returned to Japan in 1903.

Painted the year before Vereshchagin’s death, this Boat from 1903 is a marvellously painterly oil sketch he made during that visit to Japan. On 13 April 1904 he was among the many killed when the Russian battleship he was on struck mines and sank.

Reference

Wikipedia.