Vasily Vereshchagin was a famous Russian battle painter, one of the most well-known Russian artists of the 19th century, who won international acclaim and authority. 

Vasily Vasilyevich Vereshchagin was born on October, 26th, 1842 in Cherepovets town (then in the Vologda Province) into the family of a landowner. 

After graduation from the navy military school he served for a short time, and then retired. He studied in the Academy of Arts (1860—63), but left it, since he was an opponent of academic art with its conventionality and idealization of depicted objects. Vereshchagin traveled a lot. The artist mastered the genre of documentary and ethnographic painting. With profound drama he conveyed cruelties of war, the hardships and feats of military life in his series of battle paintings on the themes of the Patriotic war of 1812, Turkish campaign and the Balkan war).

Vasily Vereshchagin perished on March, 31st, 1904, due to an explosion at the battleship Petropavlovsk in the course of a battle at Port Arthur. Till the last moment the artist did not drop his sketchbook, but kept drawing his observations. The tragic death of Vasily Vereschagin stirred response all over the world: publications about his life and works appeared in press. A large posthumous exhibition dedicated to the artist was opened in Petersburg in autumn of 1904, and some years later Vereshchagin Museum was founded in the town of Nikolaev.