Born in Cherepovets in 1842 in a family of the leader of the district nobility. Vasiliy Vereshchagin became one of the talented artist specialized in battle subjects. During 1850- 1859 he attended Alexandrovsky Pupil Corps located in Tsarskoe Selo and the Sea Cadet Corps in St. Petersburg. There he took interest in drawing and dedicated all spare time for it. In 1858, Vereshchagin started attending lessons for irregular students at the Drawing School of St. Petersburg Society for the Encouragement of Artists. In 1860, Vereshchagin brilliantly graduated from the Cadet Corps however, he sent in resignation and entered the Academy of Arts which he left in 1963 and went to Caucasus. The pictures depicting domestic scenes and landscapes of Caucasus were his first works. In 1864, the artist came to Paris where he entered Ecole des Beaux-arts and studied at J.L.Gerome’s workshop. In 1865, he made his second trip to Caucasus and visited Georgia and Armenia. In 1867, the artist left for Turkestan where the military operations happened. Shortly after this trip Vereshchagin created “Turkestan series” which he presented at his first one-man exhibition in London in 1973 and later in Petersburg and Moscow in 1874. In 1881 and 1882 Vereshagin arranged one-man exhibitions in Paris, Berlin, Hamburg, Dresden, Dusseldorf, Brussels and Budapest. In 1883, Vereshchagin exhibited and sold the pictures of Balkan series in Moscow and Petersburg, the main art works were acquired by P.M. Tretyakov. Besides, from 1889 to 1891 the artist presented his works at the one-man exhibitions in Vienna, Frankfurt am Main, Prague, Leipzig, Koenigsberg, Amsterdam, Stockholm, London, Liverpool, as well as in the cities of USA. Since the declaration of the Russo-Japanese war on February 28, 1904 Vereshagin had gone to the acting army located at the Far East and perished in Port Arthur when the flag battleship “Petropavlovsk” had been exploded.