The name of Vasily Vasilyevich Vereshchagin - an outstanding Russian realist painter, citizen artist - is among the names of the largest figures of Russian national culture. Vereshchagin is one of the classics of Russian realistic painting. With his work, he, together with V.G. Perov, I.N. Kramsky, A.K. Savasov, I.E. Repin, V.I. Surikov, V.E. Makovsky, I.I. Shishkin, V.M. Vasnetsov and others remarkable artists mark the great rise of Russian fine art in the second half of the 19th century. The real work, collecting together and summarizing large literature about the artist, attracting new archival materials, is an attempt to give a monographic essay about Vereshchagin more detailed than any other that has appeared so far.