AMERICAN ART GALLERIES. EXHIBITION OF THE WORKS OF VASSILI VERESTCHAGIN ILLUSTRATED DESCRIPTIVE CATALOGUE. NEW YORK. 1888. E SADE 1202142 FOGG MUSEUM LIBRARY 4775 FA 4175.1 B COPYRIGHT, 1888, BY Press of J. J. Little & Co., I trust that men will love me; for my art HE historical details, some of which directly, others indirectly, concern my studies and pictures of Palestine-that interesting land. for every Christian-are founded chiefly on traditions so well preserved among the people of the East. My own researches excepted, I have availed myself of the Gospels and old books, as well as of some modern compilations, such as Murray's Syria and Palestine, Cook's Handbook for Palestine and Syria, Isambert's Orient, Brother Lievin's Terra Sainte, etc. Some of the studies are very small, my intention having been to repaint them a larger size. Some are unfinished, owing to the suspicion of the Turks that I was drawing plans of the "Promised Land." My impressions of travel in India formed themselves into a series of large pictures, in which I conceived the idea of representing the history of the conquest of a large Asiatic country by a handful of brave and enterprising Europeans. The first picture, commenced on a large canvas, was intended to portray the English Ambassadors in the presence of the Great Mogul in his celebrated audience hall at Agra. The next pictures were to represent different prominent events of Indian history, finishing with the triumphant entry of the Prince of Wales into Delhi, symbolical of the definitive conquest of the country. This last scene, which I witnessed in 1875, is the only one of the series completed, because the outbreak of the Russo-Turkish war at that time took me away from my studio to the battle-fields. Observing life through all my various travels, I have been particularly struck by the fact that even in our time people kill one another everywhere under all possible pretexts, and by every possible means.. Wholesale murder is still called war, while killing individuals is called execution. Everywhere the same worship of brute strength, the same inconsistency; on the one hand men slaying their fellows by the million for an idea often impracticable, are elevated to a high pedestal of public admiration on the other, men who kill individuals for the sake of a crust of bread, are mercilessly and promptly exterminated-and this even in Christian countries, in the name of Him whose teaching was founded on peace and love. These facts, observed on many occasions, made a strong impression on my mind, and after having carefully thought the matter over, I painted several pictures of wars and executions. These subjects I have treated in a fashion far from sentimental, for having myself killed many a poor fellow-creature in different wars, I have not the right to be sentimental. But the sight of heaps of human beings slaughtered, shot, beheaded, hanged |