Vasily Vereshchagin Vasily Vasilyevich Vereshchagin ( , October 26 , 1842 – April 13 , 1904 ) was one of the most famous Russia n battle painter s and one of the first Russian art ists to be widely recognized abroad . The graphic nature of his realist scenes led many of them to never be printed or exhibited . Years of apprenticeship . Vereshchagin was born at Cherepovets , Novgorod Governorate , Russia in 1842 as the middle of three brothers . His father was a landowner of noble birth . When he was eight years old he was sent to Tsarskoe Selo to enter the Alexander Cadet Corps , and three years later he entered the Sea Cadet Corps at St Petersburg , making his first voyage in 1858 . He served on the frigate , which sailed to Denmark , France and Egypt . Vereshchagin graduated first in the list at the naval school , but left the service immediately to begin the study of drawing in earnest . He won a medal two years later , in 1863 , from the St Petersburg Academy for his " Ulysses Slaying the Suitors " . In 1864 he proceeded to Paris , where he studied under Jean - Léon Gérôme , though he dissented widely from his master ' s methods . Travels in Central Asia . In the Paris Salon of 1866 he exhibited a drawing of " Dukhobor s chanting their Psalms " . In the next year he was invited to accompany General Konstantin Kaufman ' s expedition to Turkestan . He was granted the rank of ensign . His heroism at the siege of Samarkand from June 2 – 8 , 1868 resulted an award of the Cross of St George ( 4th class ) . He was an indefatigable traveler , returning to St . Petersburg in late 1868 , to Paris in 1869 , back to St . Petersburg later in the year , and then back to Turkestan at the end 1869 via Siberia . In 1871 , he established an atelier in Munich , and made a sole exhibition of his works at the Crystal Palace in London in 1873 . He made another exhibition of his works in St . Petersburg in 1874 , where two of his painting , namely " The Apotheosis of War " , dedicated " to all conquerors , past , present and to come , " and " Left Behind " , the picture of a dying soldier deserted by his fellows , were denied a showing on the grounds that they portrayed the Russian military in a poor light . In late 1874 , he departed for an extensive tour of the Himalayas , India and Tibet , spending over two years in travel . He returned to Paris in late 1876 . Russo - Turkish War . With the start of the Russo - Turkish War ( 1877 – 1878 ) , Vereshchagin left Paris and returned to active service with the Imperial Russian Army . He was with the Russian army during the ; he was present at the crossing of the Shipka Pass and at the Siege of Plevna , where his brother was killed ; and he was dangerously wounded during the preparations for the crossing of the Danube near Rustchuk . At the conclusion of the war , he acted as secretary to General Skobelev at San Stefano . After the war , he settled at Munich , where Vereshchagin produced his war pictures so rapidly that he was freely accused of employing assistants . The sensational subjects of his pictures , and their didactic aim , the promotion of peace by a representation of the horrors of war , attracted a large section of the public not usually interested in art to the series of exhibitions of his pictures in Paris in 1881 and subsequently in London , Berlin , Dresden , Vienna and other cities . Vereshchagin painted several scenes of imperial rule in British India . His epic portrayal of " The State Procession of the Prince of Wales into Jaipur in 1876 " is claimed to be the third largest painting in the world . In 1882 – 1883 , he again traveled to India . He aroused much controversy by his series of three pictures of a Roman execution ( the " Crucifixion " ) ; of sepoy s blown from the guns in India ; and of the execution of Nihilist s in St Petersburg . His picture " Suppression of the Indian Revolt by the English " depicted executions carried out by tying victims to the barrels of guns . Vereshchagin ' s detractors argued that such executions had only occurred in the Indian Rebellion of 1857 , but the painting depicted modern soldiers of the 1880s , implying that the practice was normal . Because of its photographic style , the painting appeared to present itself as impartial record of a real event . In the " Magazine of Art " in December 1887 , Vereshchagin defended himself , rather evasively , by saying that that if there were another rebellion then the British would use it again . A journey in Syria and Palestine in 1884 furnished him with an equally discussed set of subjects from the New Testament . Vereshchagin ' s paintings caused controversy over portraying the figure of Christ with what was thought at the time to be an unseemly realism . His depiction of Jesus ' s features was thought of as excessively vulgar and over - emphatically Semitic in ethnicity . The " 1812 " series on Napoleon ' s Russian campaign , on which Vereshchagin also wrote a book , seem to have been inspired by Tolstoi ' s " War and Peace " , and were painted in 1893 at Moscow , where the artist eventually settled . Last years . Vereshchagin was in the Far East during the First Sino - Japanese War , with the American troops in the Philippines , and with the Russian troops in Manchuria . During the Russo - Japanese War , he was invited by Admiral Stepan Makarov to join him aboard Makarov ' s flagship , . On April 13 , 1904 , " Petropavlovsk " struck two mines while returning to Port Arthur and sank , taking down with it most of the crew , including both Admiral Makarov and Vereshchagin . Vereshchagin ' s last work , a picture of a council of war presided over by Admiral Makarov , was recovered almost undamaged . Legacy . The town of Vereshchagino in Perm Krai is named after him , as well as a minor planet , 3410 Vereshchagin , discovered by Soviet astronomer Lyudmila Zhuravlyova in 1978 . W . T . Stead , " Vassili Verestchagin : Character Sketch , " Review of Reviews ( London ) , vol . 19 ( January 1899 ) , frontispiece , 22 - 33 .