History, through pictures, paintings and portraits, has an altogether different effect as it immediately triggers the imagination of the viewer making him/her feel the emotions and poignancy of the scene or situation or person depicted. Vasily Vereshchagin (1842-1904), the world renowned master of battle scene paintings, who ironically was a staunch pacifist, has the same result.
An album of 50 masterpieces and around 150 sketches on Indian themes, “Vasily Vereshchagin Indian Poet” was released last week jointly by Lokesh Chandra, President, Indian Council for Cultural Relations, and Alexander M. Kadakin, Ambassador of the Russian Federation to India, at a function at New Delhi’s Russian Centre of Science and Culture (RCSC) which held it jointly with the Embassy of the Russian Federation. The volume was dedicated to the upcoming visit to India of Russian President Vladimir Putin. While Chandra was the chief guest, Kapila Vatysyan, Chairperson, India International Centre — Asia Project, attended as the guest of honour.
The book is third in the series about the outstanding Russians who linked their scientific, creative and artistic paths with that of India. The first two been “Old India, Notes on Afanasy Nikitin’s Voyage beyond the Three Seas” (2010) a book by I.P. Minaev and an album “Prince Alexei Saltykov’s Journeys across India” (2012). They were 15th Century traveller and artist/writer respectively. Kadakin in his key-note address while mentioning the success of Festival of Russian Culture in India referred to the series and observed the objective was “to familiarise international community with the life and oeuvre of those eminent Russians who significantly contributed to the spiritual and artistic affinity and amity between the peoples of Russia and India.”
Drawing attention to the masterpieces, Kapila Vatsayan commented, “Paintings turned out to be the rarest of the rare assets of the artistic heritage in general cutting across all barriers of the world.”
The publication has unique travel journals which have been translated into English for the first time. Ferina Duggan-Polichtchouk who translated the journals with her husband Alexandre Polichtchouk Duggan-Polichtchouk, said, “The artist’s works bring out the dress, customs, religious beliefs and day-to-day life of Indians.” She pointed out that he had made two trips to India, from 1874 to 1876 and then again from 1882 to 1883. The journals in the album deal with his journey in the Himalayan regions including Sikkim, Kashmir and Ladakh apart from paintings of the region. Besides, it also includes other paintings as well, some depicting battles, other portraits, landscapes, expressive faces, animals, architecture and so on. She described Vereshchagin’s art as “deep, soul-searching and filled with meaning much like Russian literature”.
The dignitaries who attended the function included Parakhat H. Durdyev, Ambassador of Turkmenistan, Ibrahim A. Hajiyev, Ambassador of the Republic of Azerbaijan and Samargul Adamkulova, Ambassador of the Kyrgyz Republic to India.
