Vasily Vasilyevich Vereshchagin (1842-1904) is one of Imperial Russia’s greatest artists. His most famous pictures document the Russian military’s advance through Central Asia in the second half of the nineteenth century. They are rightly considered masterpieces, illustrating the brutality of war on both sides, refusing to turn away from even the most blood-curdling events. His style was more like a war photographer than painter. His paintings were both condemned as ‘unpatriotic’ and defeatist and lauded as great works that emphasised the real nature of war.

However, there is another side to Vereshchagin’s painting that has seldom been highlighted. During two extended trips to Central Asia in 1868-69 and 1870-71 he travelled extensively in what is now Eastern Kazakhstan. At one point he even crossed into ‘Chinese Turkestan’ (Xinjiang), along with a sotnia of Cossacks. He also visited the Chui Valley that marks the border between today’s Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.

The paintings that resulted from these tours through the Kazakh homelands depict the everyday life of the nomads, their migrations, camps and costumes. They show a deep respect for the local culture and an appreciation of the nomadic way of life and are very different from the pictures through which he made his reputation. The only painters who had visited the region previously were Thomas Witlam Atkinson, who was there in the late 1840s, and Pavel Kosharov, who accompanied P P Semenov Tianshansky on his journeys into the Tian Shan Mountains.

You can find the essay below:

The essay is longer than most articles that appear on this blog, so I have presented it as an attached file. I would be delighted to hear from readers who would like to comment on it.