Portrait of P. P. Kalytyn, an Officer of the Russian Army in the Russo-Turkish War

Vasyl Vasylovych Vereshchahin was a battle painter, landscape painter, and draftsman. Born on October 26, 1842 in the city of Cherepovets, Novgorod province, he studied at the Naval Cadet Corps in St. Petersburg (1853-1860), at the drawing school of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts (from 1858), at the Imperial Academy of Arts under O. Markov (1860-1863), and at the Paris Academy of Arts under J. Gérôme (1864-1866). In 1884, Vereshchanin was elected professor of the Academy of Arts, but refused this title, striving for independence from the official direction in art. He traveled a great deal - to the Caucasus and the Danube, the north of Russia, Cuba and the Philippines, Japan. He took part in many battles. He took part in military operations in Turkestan and the Russian-Turkish war. He died in 1904 during the explosion of the flagship battleship "Petropavlovsk" near Port Arthur during the Russo-Japanese War. Vereshchanin created large series of paintings - Turkestan (1868-1873), Balkan (1877-1879), Palestine (1884-1885), Indian and Himalayan (1870-1880s), and "1812" (1887-1904). His work marked a whole stage in the development of world battle painting.