Vasily Vasilyevich Vereshchagin

Vasily Vasilyevich Vereshchagin , 1842-1904, Russian painter, soldier, and traveler. He is best known for his military pictures, which portrayed war in all its horror and brutality. He is known also for his studies of Turkistan and Asian life and the canvases dealing with Anglo-Indian history. Among his most famous pictures are Before the Attack, After the Attack, The Apotheosis of War, Left Behind, The Presentation of the Trophies, All Quiet at the Shipka Pass, The Graves at Shipka, and Blessing the Dead. Most of his works are collected in the Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow. He was killed in the explosion of the flagship Petropavlovsk in the Russo-Japanese War.

Bibliography: See his autobiography (tr. 1887).

Pushkin Theatre, Moscow. This theatre opened in 1951 under Vasily Vasilyevich Vanin (1898–1951), who shortly before his death staged there a revival of Krechinsky's Wedding by Sukhovo-Kobylin. Interesting productions included revivals of Ostrovsky's At a Busy Place in 1952, Chekhov's Ivanov in 1960, and Sholokhov's Virgin Soil Upturned in 1963. The theatre also staged a new translation of Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest in 1957, a dramatization of Goncharov's Oblomov (1969), and Schiller's The Robbers (1986).