About the book: 2010 / Vasily Vasilyevich Vereshchagin's exhibitions in Russia, Europe, and America caused pandemonium. Connoisseurs of his work were Turgenev, Mussorgsky, Stasov, Tretyakov; Liszt called him a genius of painting. He showed his paintings to Russian emperors and the German Kaiser, called US President T. Roosevelt a friend, and was at war next to General Skobelev and Admiral Makarov. The artist visited many of the then “hot spots”: Turkestan, the Balkans, the Philippines. His travel routes spanned Europe, Asia, North America and Cuba. He painted the snowy peaks of the Himalayas, rural churches in the Russian North, and the deserts of Central Asia. Vereshchagin influenced the development of the pacifism movement and was nominated as a candidate for the first Nobel Peace Prize. The book by Arkady Kudri tells about a painter who was accustomed to living dangerously, sometimes deadly riskily, who dedicated most of his works to the cruel truth of war and died as a warrior on a ship sunk by an enemy mine.