Vasilyevich Vereshchagin is acclaimed as one of the most distinguished Russian battle painters of the time, and one of the first Russian artists to be widely recognized outside his home country.
Regarded as one of the great master painters of Orientalism, Vereshchagin was born on October 26, 1842, in an aristocrat family, in the city of Cherepovets in the Vologda region of Russia.