Defeated. Dirge. 1878-1879 Vasily Vereshchagin (1842-1904)

Description of Vasily Vereshchagin’s painting "The Defeated. Memorial Service."

"The Defeated. A Panikhida" belongs to the Balkan series of works by the artist Vereshchagin. It depicts the devastating consequences of the famous storming of the Bulgarian town of Plevna. For the Russian army, the consequences were expressed in huge human losses.

By the time the painting was made, there was a trend in Russia to depict military parades and maneuvers. Unlike many artists, the war for Vereshchagin - it is always war. The great tragedy for millions of people, and not only the dead, but the survivors.

On the canvas depicts a huge field and the sky obscured by clouds. On the field lie the bodies of dead soldiers, slightly sprinkled with yellowish earth. The entire space, as far as can be seen, is occupied by the bodies of the dead, from the beginning of the field to the horizon. Vereshchagin was able to transfer a sense of melancholy, hopelessness and utter doom onto his canvas.

Near the field stand two men with uncovered heads. These are the commander, bidding farewell to the fallen soldiers, and the priest, serving a memorial service for them. Two of the living and an immense field of the dead.

The painting "Defeated. Funeral Service" is executed in subdued fall and summer colors: light blue, beige, various shades of brownish. These colors were chosen to emphasize the tragedy of the situation.

Contemporaries quite highly appreciated the design and execution of the work.

The canvas can evoke a dual feeling. Compassion for the fallen soldiers is one thing. Outrage that such a thing is possible at all is another. With works like this, the artist addresses both his contemporaries and future generations, showing them what the word "war" really means. Not only beautiful parades, heroism, and marches, but also fields like these, strewn with corpses. This is the opinion of Vereshchagin, a Russian officer who went through many wars in the second half of the 19th century and died in the Russian-Japanese Navy.