Abstract
During the course of the nineteenth century, the Russian narrative of the 1812 invasion changed to fit the exigencies of various rulers. Beginning in the summer of 1812, when Alexander I reluctantly left his troops to travel to Moscow to “appeal to the sentiments of the Russian people as a whole,” as Wortman explains, a myth was encouraged that conveyed that the Russian people stood united behind the emperor and the nobility to expel the foreign invader from their land. In the wake of the Decembrist Uprising at the beginning of Nicholas I’s reign, the era of Alexander II’s reforms, and the disaster of the Crimean War, the terms of this discourse shifted, particularly around the concept of the narod, or the Russian people. As Wortman explicates, Russia’s emperors avoided the transition to the Western model of national identity, and, instead, they “sought to make ‘nationality’ (narodnost’) an attribute of imperial power, reflected in the past activity and identity of the monarchy—to find in the Westernized court and monarchy a common past with the Russian people.” As I argued in the previous chapter, Russian representations of the saga of 1812 reflected these changes, particularly in the form of official battle painting.
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Notes
- 1.
Wortman, Visual Texts, Ceremonial Texts, Texts of Exploration, 149. At the same time, Alexander I signed a manifesto authored by Shishkov, who served as State Secretary at the time, that famously declared that the Russian people, led by Tsar and church, would “triumph over their enemy, overcome them, and saving themselves, save the freedom and the independence of kings and kingdoms!”
- 2.
Richard Wortman, Russian Monarchy: Representation and Rule (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2013), 152.
- 3.
There is some controversy over how long Vereshchagin worked on the series. While some claim that the artist worked on it from 1889 to 1900, the Russian art historian A. K. Lebedev, based on documents found in the archives of the Tretyakov gallery, argues that the artist worked on the series from 1887 until his death in 1904. See Lebedev, Vasilii Vasil’evich Vereshchagin, 241.
- 4.
Lieven, 10.
- 5.
Tarle, Napoleon’s Invasion of Russia, 228.
- 6.
The previous notation lists a translation of his first history of the invasion, E. V. Tarle, Nashestvie Napoleona na Rossiiu (Moscow: OGIZ, 1938). The other two are Napoleon (Moscow: Gos. Sotsialno-Ekon. Izd., 1942) and 1812 god. Napoleon. Nashestvie Napoleona na Rossiju. Mihail Illarionovich Kutuzov-polkovodec diplomat (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Akademii nauk SSSR, 1959).
- 7.
Ann K. Erickson, “E. V. Tarle: The Career of a Historian under the Soviet Regime” The American Slavic and East European Review 19:2 (April 1960): 202.
- 8.
Tarle, Nashestvie Napoleona na Rossiiu, 176. Tarle’s unfinished third book, listed above, was published posthumously, and began as a long article he wrote for Voprosy istori in response to his critics. In this revision he praised Kutuzov’s military and diplomatic strategies in 1812, in accordance with Stalin’s own evaluation of the nineteenth-century commander, at the expense of Alexander I. As Erickson explains: “For Alexander the war was only beginning when the French left Russia, Tarle observed, since he wanted to save Europe and help England, while for Kutuzov the war had ended the moment the French crossed the Niemen” (215).
- 9.
Daniel Brower, Turkestan and the Fate of the Russian Empire (London: Routledge-Curzon, 2003), 47.
- 10.
The Society was created in St. Petersburg in 1820 when three wealthy benefactors established a drawing school to support students as they prepared for entrance to the Imperial Academy. Within a few years the Society began to receive some state funding and it was later renamed the Imperial Society for the Encouragement of Artists.
- 11.
Barooshian, 8–13.
- 12.
Rosa Newmarch, “Vassily Verestchagin: War Painter,” The Fortnightly Review 75: 81 (1904): 1111.
- 13.
Daniel R. Brower, Images of the Orient: Vasilii Vereshchagin and Russian Turkestan (Berkeley: Center for German and European Studies, University of California, 1993), 10.
- 14.
David Schimmelpenninck van der Oye, 195.
- 15.
Vereshchagin, Katalog kartinam, etiudam i risunkam V. V. Vershchagina (St. Petersburg: 1874), ii–iii.
- 16.
Hugh Seton-Watson, The New Imperialism: A Background Book (London: Bodley Head, 1961), 12.
- 17.
Vereshchagin, Katalog kartinam, iii.
- 18.
F. M. Dostoevsky, “Geok-Tepe. What is Asia to Us?,” 1048.
- 19.
Milan Hauner, What is Asia to Us? Russia’s Asian Heartland Yesterday and Today (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1990), 3.
- 20.
Dostoevsky, 1048.
- 21.
Vereshchagin’s painting can be viewed here: accessed 23 September 2023, https://www.wikiart.org/en/vasily-vereshchagin/eaters-of-opium-1868.
- 22.
Edward Said, Orientalism, 7.
- 23.
V. V. Vereshchagin, “Iz puteshestviia po Srednei Azii,” Ocherki, nabroski, vospominaniia (St. Petersburg: 1883), 61.
- 24.
Cited in Barrett, “Shamil in Captivity”: 365.
- 25.
Basile Vereschaguine, “Voyage dans l’Asie centrale: D’Orembourg à Samarcande,” Le Tour du Monde 25: 224.
- 26.
Lebedev, Vasilii Vasilievich Vereshchagin. Zhizn i tvorchestvo, 68.
- 27.
Vereshchagin’s painting, dated 1868, can be viewed here: accessed 23 September 2023, https://www.wikiart.org/en/vasily-vereshchagin/after-good-luck-1868.
- 28.
Vereshchagin’s painting, also dated 1868, can be viewed here: accessed 23 September 2023, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:После_неудачи.jpg.
- 29.
Barooshian, 27.
- 30.
David Schimmelpenninck van der Oye, 197.
- 31.
A. K. Lebedev, Zhizn′ i naslediie V.V. Vereshchagina v svete novykh publikatsii (Moscow: Nauchno-issl. in-t teorii i istorii izobrazitel′nykh iskusstv Rossiiskoi akademii khudozhestv, 1992), 37.
- 32.
N. P. Sobko and M. P. Botkin, eds., Illiustrirovannyi katalog khudozhestvennago otdiela Vserossiiskoi Vystavki v Moskve, 1882 g.: soderzhashchii bolee 250 snimkov, iz kotorykh okolo 150 s originalnykh risunkov khudozhnikov (St. Petersburg: 1882), n.p.
- 33.
Lebedev, Zhizn′ i naslediie V.V. Vereshchagina, 39.
- 34.
Vereshchagin’s painting can be viewed here: accessed 23 September 2023, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1871_Vereshchagin_Apotheose_des_Krieges_anagoria.JPG.
- 35.
Lebedev, Zhizn′ i naslediie V.V. Vereshchagina, 29.
- 36.
Cited in A. K. Lebedev and G. K. Burova, eds., Perepiska V.V. Vereshchagina i V.V. Stasova (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1950), 15.
- 37.
See Lalumia, 150.
- 38.
Wortman, Russian Monarchy: Representation and Rule, 162.
- 39.
Barooshian, 63–64.
- 40.
William C. Fuller, Civil-Military Conflict in Imperial Russia, 1881–1914 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), 319.
- 41.
Barooshian, 65.
- 42.
Aleksandr Vasilevich Vereshchagin, At Home and in War 1853–1881 (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell and Co.: 1888), 272–273.
- 43.
Fuller, 310.
- 44.
Vereshchagin’s painting can be viewed here: accessed 23 September 2023, https://uploads8.wikiart.org/images/vasily-vereshchagin/two-hawks-bashi-bazouk-1879.jpg.
- 45.
V. V. Verestchagin, Painter, Soldier, Traveler: Autobiographical Sketches (London: R. Bentley, 1887), 197.
- 46.
Barooshian, 87.
- 47.
Vereshchagin’s three paintings can be viewed here: accessed 23 September 2023, https://arthive.com/vasilyvasilyevichvereshchagin/works/397513~SHIPKA_all_is_quiet_Triptych_Reconstruction.
- 48.
See M. P. Botkine and Nikolai P. Sobko eds. Illiustrirovannyi katalog khudozhestvennago otdiela Vserossiiskoi Vystavki v Moskvie, 1882 r. (St. Petersburg, 1882). Two of the most poignant and controversial of Vereshchagin’s paintings of the Russo-Turkish war were on view: The Conquerors and Vanquished. Requiem (both 1877–1879). Presented as a pair, the first depicts six Turkish soldiers who have stripped a Russian officer of his uniform and disrespectfully try them on while saluting one another. The heads and decapitated bodies of Russian soldiers are scattered across the field—a detail based on scenes of scavenging and atrocities the artist witnessed in Bulgaria. In the latter, a Russian Orthodox priest performs the ceremony of the last rites over a field of dead Muslim soldiers. The priest who performed this service at Telish in Northern Bulgaria saw the painting in the exhibition and publicly confirmed its accuracy. See Lebedev, Vasilii Vasilievich Vereshchagin. Zhizn i tvorchestvo. 185–86.
- 49.
Fedor Ilichovich Bulgakov, V. V. Vereshchagin i ego proizvedeniia (St. Petersburg: I. N. Kushnerev, 1905), 92.
- 50.
Bulgakov, V. V. Vereshchagin, 11–12.
- 51.
Two of these paintings can be viewed at the Brooklyn Museum of Art: The Road of the War Prisoners and A Resting Place of Prisoners (both 1878–79), as they were purchased by a private collector in New York in 1891. See this site: accessed 23 September 2023, https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/opencollection/objects/4630.
- 52.
See Lvova, 18.
- 53.
Letter to Tretyakov, cited in Lebedev, Zhizn′ i naslediie V.V. Vereshchagina, 70–71.
- 54.
Music too played a role in this process. In addition to Tchaikovsky’s celebrated 1812 overture, other composers dealt with this theme. For example, in 1813 Daniel Steibelt completed a symphonic piece titled The Burning Sacrifice. That same year, an English composer Sir John Stevenson composed The Russian Sacrifice.
- 55.
See André Monnier, “Pushkin et Napoléon” Cahiers du Monde russe, 32/2. 1991, accessed 23 September 2023, http://monderusse.revues.org/document931.html.
- 56.
As E. J. Hobsbawm observed: “The extraordinary power of the [Napoleonic] myth over post-Waterloo Europe cannot be adequately explained neither by Napoleonic victories nor by Napoleonic propaganda, nor even by Napoleon’s own undoubted genius.” See A. J. Hobsbawm The Age of Revolution, 1789–1848 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1962), 97.
- 57.
Kovalevsky was one of the artists commissioned by the imperial administration to complete works dealing with the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878 for the war gallery of the Winter Palace (see Chap. 2). During this war of he was assigned official artist to the 12th regimental corps. See Sadoven, Russkie khudozhniki batalisty, 280–287.
- 58.
Tolstoy, War and Peace, 694–695.
- 59.
De Ségur, Napoleon’s Russian Campaign (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1958), 255.
- 60.
The 1812 Overture was commissioned as a ceremonial piece for the Moscow Exhibition of 1882 and the consecration of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, which was built to commemorate the seventieth anniversary of Russia’s victory over France.
- 61.
Lieven questions the elevated significance of the 1812 campaign, and of the Battle of Borodino in particular, arguing that it has been exaggerated at the expense of understanding that “the Russian army fought with more skill in 1813–14 than in 1812.” He argues that “it is not surprising that Russians find it easier to identify with the battle of Borodino, fought under Kutuzov outside Moscow, than with the battle of Leipzig, fought in Germany under Barclay de Tolly and Schwarzenberg in defense of a concept of Russian security rooted in the European balance of power” (526–27).
- 62.
I have organized the order of the paintings according to the list the artists himself provided for an exhibition of the series in St. Petersburg in 1899: Vasilii Vasilevich Vereshchagin, Napoleon I v Rossii v kartinakh V. V. Vereshchagina: c ego predisloviem’ i poiasnitel’nym opisaniem kartin’ (Saint Petersburg: Khudozh. izd. F. I. Bulgakova, 1899), 50.
- 63.
See Vasilii Fedorovich Novitski, ed. Voennaia entsiklopediia, vol. 6 (St. Petersburg: Tip. I. D. Sytina, 1911–1915), 322.
- 64.
Russian State Archives of Literature and Art (TsGALI), ф. 1932, оп. 1, ед. хр. 66. Cited in O.V Fedorova, Otechestvennaia voina 1812 goda. Rossiia i Evropa: Tezisy nauchno konferentsii (Borodino: Istochnik publikatsi, 1992), n.p.
- 65.
V. V. Vereshchagin, “1812” Napoleon in Russia.
- 66.
The author and the writer did have the opportunity to meet. It seems the critic Stasov hoped to make this happen and he set up a meeting between the two at the Imperial Public Library in St. Petersburg. While Vereshchagin turned up at the appointed time, after waiting for over two hours he was informed that Tolstoy had, instead, departed for his home in the country. See Vasilii Vasil′evich Vereshchagin, Andrei Konstantinovich Lebedev ed., Izbrannye pis′ma (Moscow: Izd-vo Izobrazitel′noe iskusstvo, 1981), 9. Tolstoy, however, did meet with Repin in 1880 because Stasov, this time, pulled off the encounter. Vereshchagin relationship with other artists, writers, and critics was problematic, it seems, because of his prickly personality. After the incident concerning the meeting with Tolstoy, he relationship with Stasov cooled for a while. Vereshchagin completely cut off his friendship with Tretyakov in 1883 for three years, after his patron declined to lend the painting Before the Attack for an exhibition, saying that he was concerned that the large canvas might be damaged in transportation. Vereshchagin was angered because the collector did not consult with him and he fired off a bitter telegram to the critic saying, “We don’t know each other anymore.” Cited in N. G. Galkina, ed., Perepiska V. V. Vereshchagina i P .M. Tret′iakova. 1874–1898 (Moscow: Izdvo. Iskusstvo, 1963), 69. One notable exception, was the novelist Ivan Turgenev, who was introduced to the artist by a fellow painter, Alexey Petrovich Bogolyubov—all three were in Paris after the war in the Balkans. They remained on very cordial terms until the author’s death in 1883.
- 67.
Cited in Lebedev, Vasilii Vasilevich Vereshchagin, 254.
- 68.
Tolstoy, War and Peace, 912.
- 69.
Barooshian, 125.
- 70.
Vasilii Vereshchagin, “Sheet 2,” Listki iz zapisnii knizhki (Moscow: 1899), n.p.
- 71.
Vereshchagin, “1812” Napoleon in Russia, 91.
- 72.
Barooshian, 131–32.
- 73.
Bozherianov, n.p.
- 74.
Vereshchagin, “1812” Napoleon in Russia, 92.
- 75.
Barooshian explains that Vereshchagin blamed the Russian high command for the defeat during the Third assault at Plevna, where his younger brother Sergei died. See Barooshian, 64–65.
- 76.
See De Ségur, Napoleon’s Russian Campaign, 96.
- 77.
Vereshchagin’s painting can be viewed here: accessed 23 September 2023, https://www.wikiart.org/en/vasily-vereshchagin/before-the-attack-at-plevna-1881.
- 78.
Riasanovsky, A History of Russia, 312.
- 79.
Vereshchagin, “1812” Napoleon in Russia, 169.
- 80.
Tolstoy, War and Peace, 729.
- 81.
In On Heroes, Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History (1840), Carlyle describes the hero, in one of the lectures that makes up this book, in biblical terms: “For great Men I have ever had the warmest predilection; and can perhaps boast that few such in this era have wholly escaped me. Great Men are the inspired (speaking and acting) Texts of that divine BOOK OF REVELATIONS, where of a Chapter is completed from epoch to epoch, and by some named HISTORY.” In 1896 Thomas Spencer provided the first significant counterargument to the Great Man Theory in The Study of Sociology by arguing that Carlyle’s “heroes” were simply the product of their historical and social circumstances. See Ian Ousby, “Carlyle, Thackeray, and Victorian Heroism,” The Yearbook of English Studies 12, Heroes and the Heroic Special Number (1982): 152–168.
- 82.
Bozherianov, n.p.
- 83.
Tolstoy, War and Peace, 671–72.
- 84.
Tolstoy, War and Peace, 776.
- 85.
Tolstoy, War and Peace, 775.
- 86.
Trans.: “That Asiatic city of innumerable churches, holy Moscow! Here it is then at last, that famous city. It was high time” (Tolstoy, War and Peace, 75).
- 87.
Vereshchagin, “1812” Napoleon in Russia, 108.
- 88.
Tolstoy, War and Peace, 777.
- 89.
Vereshchagin, “1812” Napoleon in Russia, 110.
- 90.
Vereshchagin’s painting can be viewed here: accessed 23 September 2023, https://www.wikiart.org/en/vasily-vereshchagin/fire-of-zamoskvorechye-1896.
- 91.
Vereshchagin’s painting can be viewed here: accessed 23 September 2023, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Through_the_fire_by_Vereschagin.jpg.
- 92.
Vereshchagin’s painting can be viewed here: accessed 23 September 2023, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Return_from_Petrovsky_palace_by_V.Vereschagin.jpg.
- 93.
Barooshian, 138.
- 94.
See De Ségur, Napoleon’s Russian Campaign, 90–95.
- 95.
Tolstoy, War and Peace, 798.
- 96.
Vereshchagin, “1812” Napoleon in Russia, 212.
- 97.
De Ségur, Napoleon’s Russian Campaign, 90–91.
- 98.
While I can’t document that Vereshchagin had Goya’s work in mind while working on the 1812 series, it is almost inconceivable that an artist with his background and education would not have seen these work, even in reproduction. However, the critic Stasov, Vereshchagin’s friend and ally, does say in an essay he wrote for Vestnik iziashchnykh iskusstv (Journal of the Fine Arts) in 1884, that Vereshchagin never saw Goya’s suite of prints, The Disasters of War (1810–20), arguably Goya’s greatest indictment of war in general, and the French occupation in particular. Still, Stasov argued that, like Vereshchagin, Goya “boils and burns in his paintings; he is full of anger, indignation at the evil being committed.” Stasov made the comparison between the Spanish and Russian painters explicitly: “After Goya, there was only one artist in Europe who thought and felt the same about war as Goya—this is our Vereshchagin…they treated both sides with the same feeling of pity and condolences.” See “Fransisko Goia,” in V. V. Stasov, Izbrannye sochineniia v trekh tomakh, vol. 2, ed. P. T. Shchupunov (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1952), n.p.
- 99.
See note 28.
- 100.
Lebedev, Vasilii Vasilevich Vereshchagin, 246.
- 101.
Two more Russian artists dealt with this topic (Alexey Savrasov and Fyodor Vasiliev) before Repin. Vereshchagin’s sketch can be viewed here: accessed 23 September 2023, https://www.wikiart.org/en/vasily-vereshchagin/burlaks-1866.
- 102.
Since visiting the 1869 Turkestan exhibition in St. Petersburg, Repin admired Vereshchagin’s work very much, which his letters to Stasov demonstrate. In his memoirs, Repin explains that Vereshchagin avoided the company of most artists and quarreled with many. Still, the two artists first met in 1879 while attending a party in Moscow and shared a few words. Repin reports that Vereshchagin criticized his Zaporozhe Cossacks Composing a Mocking Letter to the Turkish Sultan as an “outdated academic vulgarity.” Repin explains that Vereshchagin added that “your ‘Barge Haulers’ is much better, and I even tossed aside the picture I started on the same subject…I could not bear being reproached for imitating your painting.” See I. E. Repin, Vospominaniia o V. V. Vereshchagine (1904–1914 gg.), vol. 1, eds. I. E. Grabar’ and I. S. Zil’bershtein (Moscow: Akad. nauk SSSR, In-t istorii iskusstv: 1948), n.p. The two had a more cordial encounter in 1892, when they were properly introduced by the hosts of a dinner for the Russian community in Paris. Later that year, Repin explained to Stasov that he hoped to complete a portrait of the artists he admired so much. This never happened; however, Repin did eulogize Vereshchagin at a memorial organized by the Imperial Academy in 1902.
- 103.
Vereshchagin’s painting, which was completed between 1887 and 1895, can be viewed here: accessed 23 September 2023, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:В_Успенском_соборе.jpg.
- 104.
Vereshchagin’s painting can be viewed here: accessed 23 September 2023, https://www.wikiart.org/en/vasily-vereshchagin/marshal-davout-in-the-chudovo-convent-1900.
- 105.
Tolstoy’s description of Marshal Davout is apt: “Better quarters could have been found him, but Davout was one of those men who purposely put themselves in most depressing conditions to have a justification for being gloomy. For the same reason they are always hard at work and in a hurry.” Tolstoy, War and Peace, 547–548.
- 106.
Vereshchagin, “1812” Napoleon in Russia, 128.
- 107.
Alan Palmer, Russian in War and Peace (New York: Macmillan, 1972), 178. Vereshchagin’s painting can be viewed here: accessed 23 September 2023, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:В_Городне_-_пробиваться_или_отступать.jpg.
- 108.
Vereshchagin’s painting can be viewed here: accessed 23 September 2023, https://www.wikiart.org/en/vasily-vereshchagin/on-the-way-bad-news-from-france-1895.
- 109.
Tolstoy, War and Peace, 607.
- 110.
Tolstoy, War and Peace, 537.
- 111.
Vereshchagin’s painting can be viewed here: accessed 23 September 2023, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Night_Bivouac_of_Great_Army.jpg.
- 112.
Vereshchagin’s painting can be viewed here: accessed 23 September 2023, https://www.wikiart.org/en/vasily-vereshchagin/captured-with-arms-shoot-them-1895.
- 113.
Tolstoy, War and Peace, 915.
- 114.
Lebedev, Vasilii Vasilevich Vereshchagin, 250.
- 115.
Lebedev, Vasilii Vasilevich Vereshchagin, 260, 272.
- 116.
Lebedev, Vasilii Vasilevich Vereshchagin, 262.
- 117.
Tolstoy, War and Peace, 606.
- 118.
V. V. Vereshchagin, Novsti i birzhevaia gazeta 1:66 (7 March 1900), 3. Cited in Lebedev, Vasily Vasil’evich Vereshchagin, 258.
- 119.
That drawing can be viewed in Sadoven, V. V. Vereshchagin, 74.
- 120.
Vereshchagin was probably influenced by Terebenev’s and Ivanov’s lubki which lampooned Napoleon’s ignominious flight in a humble sled through Poland on his way to France. In addition, a few Russian and French painters created their own variations on the subject. Terebenev’s The Journey of the Lofty Traveler from Warsaw to Paris Under the Name of Chief Marshal with a Plucked Eagle and a Bound Mameluke (n.d.) can be viewed in this source: V. V. Kalash, “Otechestvennaia voina v russkoi narodnoi poezii,” in Otechestvennaia voina i russkoe obshchestvo. 1812–1912, vol. 5, eds. A. K Dzhivelegov, S. P. Mel′gunov, and V. I. Picheta (Moscow: Tip. I. D. Sytin, 1912), 197.
- 121.
Tolstoy, War and Peace, 946.
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Nedd, A.M. (2024). Alexander II and Alexander III: Vereshchagin’s 1812. In: History and Myth in Pictorial Narratives of the Russian 'Patriotic War', 1812-1914. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-60335-8_5
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