XV Международная студенческая научная конференция Студенческий научный форум - 2023

B. V. Vereshchagin was born on October 14, 1842 in the city of Cherepovets, Novgorod province. His father, who was elected for three years as the county leader of the nobility and owned many villages in the Novgorod and Vologda provinces, belonged to a Russian noble family. Vereshchagin's great-grandfather on his mother's side, who bore the surname of Stallions and had about 1,500 souls, was a very rich landowner. V.V. Vereshchagin's mother Anna Nikolaevna, despite all the difficulties with her character, was generally gentle and kind. The situation was similar with his father: V.V. Vereshchagin's father, Vasily Vasilyevich, was generally the same as his mother, however, due to his strictness, he was much more persistent and determined than his mother.

The first teacher of V.V. Vereshchagin was his own mother, that is, Anna Nikolaevna, who taught the young V.V. Vereshchagin the basics of various sciences, including, of course, geography, French, also grammar and arithmetic - in short, the basic set of knowledge that was usually taught in the family. Since that time, V.V. Vereshchagin began to have favorite subjects, including, without a doubt, history, because it excited his mind with colorful images of the generals of the past, wars, intrigues and coups, which left an indelible impression on V.V. Vereshchagin. The first work of art that impressed V. V. was a drawing with three horses in a sleigh escaping from wolves. This drawing was depicted on the nanny's scarf, which she bought from a visiting merchant.

Among the games, reading and drawing classes, eight years of the young V. V. Vereshchagin passed unnoticed. Then V. Vereshchagin was taken to the Alexander Juvenile Building, which was located in Tsarskoye Selo. Vereshchagin bitterly described his first impressions of this place of study, saying that the cadet environment was extremely alien to new people who, when they got there, met an extremely unfriendly attitude towards themselves.And it was in the building that V. Vereshchagin first began to "learn" drawing. He was trained by the artist Kokorev.

Battle painting as Vereshchagin's greatest merit

Vasily Vasilyevich focuses all his attention on how war as a phenomenon is viewed, firstly, by its participants, and secondly, by those who have heard about it or wider society.we observe in his worldview a tendency towards realism, given that he himself was a participant in the fighting, which contradicts the vision of the war (naively idealistic) that others had, including the employees themselves, turned out to disagree with him then in this premise of realism expressed in the way he depicted the war in his paintings in 1874. How did he do it? - He uses, first of all, some "two-sided" assessment of the event: for example, his "at the fortress wall" - a picture describing the events of the defense of the Samarkand fortress during the conquest of Central Asia in 1868, among the defenders of which - the fortress - was himself. Describing these events, he notes two sides of this phenomenon that complement each other: on the one hand, it is a reflection of the victory of the Russian forces – the forces of civilization in the form of the Russian Empire and its soldiers are what those who spoke out against the picture stood on, seeing just the same this very triumph - not only them, but other strata of society not connected with the army, too - and "a pile of dead soldiers", "at a distance from which the soldiers on a stretcher at the top of a broken wall is a symbol of struggle and sacrifice - wounded soldiers are the embodiment of this struggle and sacrifice - on the other.

Thus, using the method of "reviving" the event - displaying the participants of the events, their suffering, death and life, and not just victories, awards, fame - signs of some superiority and at the same time ignoring all this, the author achieves the "contrasting effect" of his works: what was hidden from the eyes of society what they could only hear about in a certain sense - the signs of honor for those who distinguished themselves in battles - appeared before everyone - this is the merit of Vereshchagin.

His other paintings are from the "Turkestan series" of the time of the conquest of Central Asia, namely: "Forgotten". In relation to all that has been said, we can see in this picture the same thing in essence that we could see in the first picture "at the fortress wall". The soldier lies dead alone in the steppe, forgotten by his own, who did not bury him, and the vultures are already beginning to eat him. This picture reflects the same realism that has already been mentioned - left alone - and this is the first sign - without any honors - and this is the second sign - and, finally, eaten by vultures in the steppe during the conquest of Central Asia, which means only that any a soldier is, outside the "halo" of honor, just a man on the battlefield, who, if he dies, will remain forgotten by the forces of civilization - something whole - for which he stood: vultures, or the external environment itself, simply "eats" him.

Russian soldiers surrounded by enemy forces, and Russian soldiers trying to fight them off, but they internally feel that "defeat is a foregone conclusion". Another picture of "Surrounded" presents us with Russian soldiers surrounded by enemy forces, and Russian soldiers trying to fight them off, but they internally feel that "defeat is a foregone conclusion". Here we are faced with hopelessness in war: not all military clashes bring some glory, but each of them for an ordinary soldier can bring only a sense of doom in the sense of the inevitable onset of death. The question naturally arises: if death inevitably comes, then what did I fight for? Triumphs in this sense lose their value, because the only thing he is now beginning to care about is his own life, which acts as a measure of what he is ready to do: is he ready to be "surrounded" in order to be later, perhaps, "forgotten" or to be among those who will to carry your fallen comrades on a stretcher up the walls?

Vereshchagin was rather a more sensitive person, whose deep perception of ideas or, more precisely, how they were realized, which dominated society, strongly responded to his freedom-loving nature - something that was put on a par with the "unauthorized" revolutionaries and nihilists of that time. This is especially evident in the example of his fundamental work, The Apotheosis of War.

World recognition of unsurpassability

In its final form, the Turkestan series included thirteen paintings, eighty-one sketches 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 novelty of the writing were amazing, the technique was 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. Many of the artists (including Perov, Chistyakov, at first Repin) Russian Russian art seemed foreign and even alien to the Turkestan series, "colored patches" on his strict clothes, but the prevailing opinion was expressed by Kramskoy: the Turkestan series is a brilliant success of the new Russian school, its unconditional achievement, "uplifting the spirit a Russian Russian", making the heart beat "with pride that Vereshchagin is Russian, quite Russian".

References.

Vereshchagin V. V. Stories. Essays. Memoirs / Comp. and notes by V. A. Koshelev and A.V. Chernov. -- M.: Sov. Russia, 1990. –156 p.

Vereshchagin V.V. Selected letters. - Moscow: Fine Arts, 1981. – 211 p.

Vereshchagin, Vasily Vasilyevich (1842-1904). Sheets from the notebook of the artist V.V. Vereshchagin. - Moscow : tipo-lit. t-va I.N. Kushnerev, 1898. - 150 p.

F. I. Bulgakov "V.V. Vereshchagin and his works"; - St. Petersburg : A.S. Suvorin Type, 1905. – 197 p.