Lot 9: VASILY VASILIEVICH VERESCHAGIN

VASILY VASILIEVICH VERESCHAGIN 1842-1904 THE FALLEN HEROES oil on canvas 51 by 40.5cm, 20 by 16in.

'Between festive paintings of war... and paintings of war as it really is, there is a vast difference', Vereschagin pointed out to Pavel Tretyakov, and it was this very lack of traditional military pageantry in his Balkan series that awed visitors to his exhibitions in London, Paris and St Petersburg. The Fallen Heroes counts among his most vivid depictions of the human cost of war, a moving companion piece to his infamous work The Defeated. Office for the Dead, (fig.1), which was the subject of enormous attention wherever it was exhibited. But whereas the latter is formed from generalised impressions, The Fallen Heroes is much closer to a war artist's factual report, 'an objective study by an observer seeking to change society' (V.Barooshian, V.V.Vereschagin, Artist at War, , University Press Florida, 1993, p.80).

Having witnessed some of the bloodiest attacks and counter-attacks of the war, including the costly attempts to capture Plevna in which his younger brother Sergei was killed, Vereschagin was all too familiar with the grave-digging or 'mourning' troop, as they were known, and had dug graves on the battlefield himself. The crosses erected above these graves are inscribed very simply: on the closest, one can make out Gleb Ignatiev, Captain, and below, Ivan, Soldier, while the cross-piece bears the poignant words, Eternal rest.

Vereschagin's Balkan series caused a sensation and split the Russian press into two camps. The reaction of the Russian Minister for War, Dmitry Miliutin, was commonplace in military circles: Vereschagin was 'unquestionably a talented artist', but he remained perplexed by his 'strange inclination to choose for his paintings the most unattractive subjects: to portray only the unsightly dimension of war'. The wider public however, was more receptive, particularly overseas, and numerous accounts survive of crowds standing staggered before his canvases in reverential silence. 'With his palette and brush' wrote the famous French journalist Jules Vallès, 'Vereschagin brings humanity more good than Napoleon caused it evil with his great army. His works counteract the insanity of valour, the frenzy of false heroism'.