Winners. 1878-1879 Vasily Vereshchagin (1842-1904)

Description of Vasily Vereshchagin’s painting The Winners

Vereshchagin is merciless in his depiction of losses and victories. Vereshchagin is perhaps the only artist who was not subject to narcissism, and he was able to depict the truth of military life quite truthfully in his canvases.

And while Aivazovsky often depicted naval battles, Vereshchagin depicted land battles in his canvases, and mostly Asian ones. He fell in love with Central Asia, so he gathered quite a large series of canvases with Eastern motifs, in addition, there are many sketches, studies, sketches. But he never deviated from the truth.

On this painting he depicts Asian victors. They are most likely Turks. All over the hill after the battle the killed Russian soldiers lie, and the winners walk around them and take off the clothes and shoes from the corpses, rummage through their pockets for something valuable. Anything found is put on or put on shoes right there, next to the killed soldier who was robbed. But here on the battlefield they find a soldier unharmed and intact. The Turks immediately surrounded him and looked at him from all sides. One of them would get him himself. Some would get his camisole, and some would get something else of value, if he had any. But the fact that he will go into slavery is certain.

The artist has conveyed a kind of insecurity in this painting. Something fleeting and incomprehensible. And most importantly, he made it clear that not always the Russian soldier wins. This is perhaps his main truth in this picture. And it certainly caused some bewilderment among the patriotically-minded metropolitan audience. They couldn’t believe that this could happen to Russian soldiers. But it also happened, sometimes losing battles.

It just did not happen that often. And it was about the losses and told the artist. Not only that, he portrayed the "barbarians" with exquisite precision in their immediate environment, in the heart of Central Asia.