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Lot Essay
The most important painting by the great Russian master Vasily Vereshchagin to appear at auction in the last century, Crucifixion by the Romans is a work of immense significance within the artist's canon. It was duly recognised as such at its last appearance on the open market in 1891. At 8 pm sharp on the evening of 17 November 1891, the sale of some 110 paintings by the artist commenced at the American Art Galleries, New York. As The New York Times reported the day after it was sold, 'The highest price of the evening was brought by the large painting, one of a series of three that were sold separately, called Crucifixion by the Romans'.
Renowned for his insightful, on occasion painfully so, scenes depicting and interrogating the nature and behaviour of mankind, Vereshchagin's decision to portray the death of man's Saviour at the hands of the saved on such a colossal sale and with such virtuosity represents a culmination of his life's philosophy - an ever-present antithesis to the loss of human life. This philosophical position is of course famously expressed in his iconic work The Apotheosis of War.
As the pre-eminent Russian Orientalist of the 19th century, Vereshchagin's superlative talent combined with his predilection for universally relevant subject matter ensured that his exhibitions were considered major cultural events in Paris, London, Berlin, Moscow, St Petersburg, New York and Vienna, attracting thousands upon thousands of visitors. Revered in the Russian Empire, in whose successor states today entire museum galleries are devoted to his works - in the State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow and the Museum of Russian Art, Kiev, by the 1891 New York auction, Vereshchagin's success had expanded far beyond the borders of Russia. The Daily Telegraph branded him 'a great artist'; The Times wrote of his 'genius' for painting; the famous French critic Claretti wrote in Le Figaro that Vereshchagin was 'an individual who stands out from the common ranks, I know no second such a gifted nature amongst artists'; the Deutsches Montagsblatt enthused, 'When you happen upon [his] transfixing paintings, it unwillingly enters your head that here before us is the highest of what human creativity, human art, can achieve'; and Harper's Weekly insisted that his work 'is one of those contemporary miracles; no other modern artist has created such a multitude of inspiring and elevating paintings'.
One of a series of three works devoted to the subject of capital punishment, Crucifixion by the Romans (1887) was preceded by Blowing from guns in British India and Hanging in Russia. At the crux of this trilogy, which he entitled 'An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth', lay Vereshchagin's condemnation of the hypocrisy of a state's punishment of individuals fighting for their beliefs, set against the simultaneous backdrop of international warfare and imperialism. The artist's intentions are best-expressed in his own words, and as such merit quoting in full:
'Observing life through all my various travels, I have been particularly struck by the fact that even in our time people kill one another under all possible pretexts, and by every possible means. Wholesale murder is still called war, while killing individuals is called execution. Everywhere the same worship of brute strength, the same inconsistency; on the one hand men slaying their fellows by the million for an idea often impracticable, are elevated to a high pedestal of public admiration: on the other, men who kill individuals for a crust of bread, are mercilessly and promptly exterminated - and this even in Christian countries, in the name of Him whose teaching was founded on peace and love. These facts, observed on many occasions, made a strong impression on my mind, and after carefully having thought the matter over, I painted several pictures of wars and executions.'
Careful to avoid sanctimony, Vereshchagin is quick to note: 'These subjects I have treated in a fashion far from sentimental, having myself killed many a poor fellow-creature in different wars, I have not the right to be sentimental'. A certain political motivation for this trilogy is also discernable, the chronological culmination of which is represented by Hanging in Russia and poses the question as to why mankind has failed to learn from Christ's death in the almost two millennia since the event. Vereshchagin himself felt persecuted by the Russian authorities at this time, his letters to his friend and the eminent critic Vladimir Stasov, frequently expressing a strong desire to return to Russia combined with his acknowledgement of the impossibility of doing so and continuing to paint as he wished.
Blowing from Guns in British India, the earliest work in the series, depicting the 1857 suppression of the Indian uprising by the British, was inspired by the artist's first trip to India. Vereshchagin was deeply moved by what he perceived to be the plight of a great and ancient people at the hands of the colonialists, and tackled the issue in a series of paintings. In the summer of 1876 Vereshchagin began to consider the composition of the work and the attire of his intended subjects. However he was interrupted by the outbreak of the Russo-Turkish War and temporarily abandoned the topic in favour of this conflict. His first-hand observations as a staff member of General Skobelev's (1843-1882) entourage strengthened his disdain for bloodshed and in late October 1882, he set off on his second trip to India, once again fixated on the creation of this painting. In January, he wrote to Stasov from India, declaring 'Indian subjects do not interest me, I came here however to paint one in particular, which will get under the skin of more than one Englishman'. Andrei Lebedev's monograph on the artist ascribes Vereshchagin's renewed interest in the project to the assassination of the Alexander II in March 1881 by the terrorist organisation The People's Will, the response to which by his son and successor, Alexander III, provided the subject of the second work in the series, Hanging in Russia. At the end of 1883, in preparation for the third and final painting in the series, Crucifixion by the Romans, Vereshchagin set off with his wife to explore Palestine. Almost obsessively determined to create an archaeologically accurate depiction, the trip was intended to allow the artist to gather materials and make extensive sketches of local types. 'With the same characteristic ardour and tireless energy that marked his previous explorations, he [Vereshchagin] delved deep into the artistic treasures of the Holy Land. Months and months were passed amidst the crumbling ruins and among the pilgrims of all nationalities, until he has secured data, not simply for the creation of his subsequent masterpieces, but also to support his religious and artistic convictions'. The artist returned to Paris with a tremendous number of sketches of modern Palestinian life and the local people, ready to commence work on such masterpieces as Solomon's Wall (fig. 4) and Crucifixion by the Romans.
Of monumental size, the work was painted in Paris in Vereshchagin's studio which was particularly designed for the execution of over-size canvasses. Some years earlier, Vereshchagin's determination to paint on a grandiose scale provoked a row between Vereshchagin and Stasov. The critic lamented the artist's requirement of a new large and expensive studio and felt moreover that works of this size was more difficult to sell and that the size of a work had no relation to its significance. Vereshchagin took great offence at Stasov's words and responded with a sharp retort. Certainly, he paid no attention to the critic's warning and continued to execute large-scale works. Indeed the inside cover of the exhibition catalogue accompanying the 1891 auction at the American Art Association includes the following recommendation: 'Owing to the great size of some of the paintings, the Artist suggests that they be viewed from as great a distance as possible'. The power of the present work certainly justifies the large size and calls into question Stasov's suggestion that such an effect could be achieved on a smaller scale.
The composition is undoubtedly striking: in direct contrast to traditional depictions of the Crucifixion at the centre of the work, Vereshchagin positions Christ, illuminated, on the extreme right of the painting, placing the primary emphasis of the composition on the crowd. Indeed the viewer becomes part of the crowd, peering over the hordes of people and horses to see the spectacle. While Lebedev points out the poetic contrast between the muscular physique of the crucified men flanking Christ (the Good and Bad Thieves) and the slight, frail body of the mortal Saviour, there is little to distinguish Christ or to suggest His glory, save the crown of thorns. A large expanse of dark sky stretches across the horizontal, the city wall looms heavy over a crowd of traders, Pharisees and a distraught group of Christ's supporters. In the foreground, Roman soldiers with their spears and lances stand ready to quieten disorder. Two officials are elevated above the crowd, talking calmly with a Roman solider on the hill. Studies for the work indicate that Vereshchagin considered alternative compositions for the subject. One study on canvas, entitled Jerusalem, locates Golgotha deep in the background, with the crowd of people immediately surrounding it equally almost impossible to make out. The city wall is low and located far from the hill. The final composition is resoundingly considered the most successful.
It is important to understand Vereshchagin's interest in Biblical subject matter within the context of 19th century Orientalism and the general surge of interest in the archaeology of the Holy Land. Ernest Renan's (1823-1892) work The Life of Christ, which first appeared in English in 1863 and sought to examine the historical history of Christ and which we know from letters to his wife was read by Vereshchagin, was widely read and highly influential. In 1847 the first Russian Orthodox Ecclesiastical Mission in Jerusalem was sent to conduct archaeological research and facilitate pilgrimages from Russia to the Holy Land. The Mission subsequently acquired land in Palestine, organising Slavonic Orthodox services for the several hundred Russian pilgrims that were travelling to the Holy Land every year by this time. The numbers increased dramatically following the Crimean War (1853-1856). No longer permitted to maintain a navy in the Black Sea, the Russians launched a commercial shipping company, with the purpose of providing employment for those formerly serving in the Navy. Pilgrimages to the Holy Land were promoted heavily and successfully, to the extent that some 10,000 citizens of the Russian Empire were making this journey annually by the end of the century. In 1882 the Imperial Orthodox Palestinian Society was founded under the leadership of Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich (1857-1905), son of the Emperor. The society assisted the Mission, dedicating itself to the promotion of Christianity throughout the Middle East. In addition to the foundation of over 100 schools for this purpose, the society also subsidised travel to the Holy Land for workers and peasants who made up the majority of pilgrims. Against this backdrop, Vereshchagin was one of a number of late-19th century European artists - amongst them the Victorian William Holman Hunt and Vereshchagin's own teacher Jean-Léon Gérôme - who were determined to bring a new historical and archaeological accuracy to the depiction of sacred events.
Like the academic work of archaeologists shedding new light on the everyday life of Christ's contemporaries, Vereshchagin's preoccupation with realism infuses all of his finest work with a sense of vitality and fresh air. Motivated by a great desire to effect cultural accuracy in his work, at his 1887 exhibition at London's Grosvenor Gallery, where the trilogy was exhibited, he also displayed ethnographic artefacts related to the lands he had visited and painted: Tibetan prayer wheels, a drinking-cup made from a human skull, Russian and Turkish arms, the root of an ancient cypress from a quarry under the old temple of Jerusalem, and a wealth of other treasures. Vereshchagin's attention to detail, combined with his perceptive emotional insight, is employed to glorious effect in Crucifixion by the Romans. His essay 'On Progress in Art' laments the continued tradition of a lack of realism in religious painting, 'the manner of placing God and the Saints on clouds, as though these were chairs and stools, and not substances whose physical condition is well known to us'. While praising the old masters for their technique, he simultaneously lambasts their willingness to ignore the historical realities: 'For instance in the representation of the Apostles, whose personalities are so clear and convincing in the Gospels, we recognise in their forms, face and attitudes - particularly in Titian's pictures - not modest humble fisherman, but fine Italian models of athletic appearance'. Vereshchagin was determined to address religious subject matter with the same degree of realism he advocated in all his work: 'Can anyone say that I am careless about the types, about the costumes, about the landscape of the scenes represented by me? That I don't actually study out beforehand the personages, the surrounding figuring in my works? Hardly so. Can anyone say that, with me, any scene taking place in reality in the broad sunlight had been painted by studio light - that a scene, taking place under the frosty skies of the North, is reproduced in the warm inclosure [sic] of four walls. Hardly so' . As such, in accordance with the Synoptic gospels, which tell of 'the sixth hour, and there was a darkness over all the earth until the ninth hour. And the sun was darkened, and the veil of the temple was rent in the midst', Vereshchagin made a point of painting the Crucifixion during the hours of darkness.
He was not alone in this desire. Ivan Kramskoy's Christ in the Wilderness and Vasilii Polenov's The Virgin Spring in Nazareth, preceded Crucifixion by the Romans, which in turn surely influenced Ilya Repin's even grizzlier and more realist Golgotha. While his subsequent evangelical works, The Holy Family and The Resurrection of Christ were condemned by the Catholic Church and branded irreverent, Vereshchagin maintained that 'Realism is not antagonistic to anything that is held dear to the contemporary man - it does not clash with common sense, with science, nor with religion. Can anyone have anything but the deepest reverence for the teachings of Christ concerning the Father and Creator of all that exists - to the golden rule of Christian charity?'. Lebedev, writing under Soviet academic conditions, argues that the artist was 'an atheist without doubt', an interpretation which demands scrutiny and would seem to contradict Vereshchagin's own statements in response to the attack on his work by the Church. Although Vereshchagin's son reveals in his memoirs that the family didn't go to church or observe the fast, it would appear that the artist who wrote to Stasov 'I respect Christ but I hardly follow his rules' was cynical about organised religion but not without a certain faith. The controversial 1881 Vienna exhibition at which The Holy Family and The Resurrection of Christ were exhibited attracted over 110,000 visitors. While Vereshchagin was essentially exhausted by the furore, as he states in the introduction to the 1891 catalogue, 'Facts laid upon canvas without embellishment must speak eloquently for themselves': the artist's talent was always more than sufficient to speak for itself.
Crucifixion by the Romans, along with a number of Vereshchagin's finest paintings, was exhibited in London in 1887 and subsequently at the American Art Galleries in New York in November 1888, where Crucifixion was hung in the largest upper room alongside the two other works in the series. On view in New York for two months, Vereshchagin's American show was an incredible success. From New York the exhibition travelled to Chicago, St Louis, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Boston. During this time, hundreds of thousands of visitors attended the show. When the tour ended in 1891, the works returned to New York City, where the entire collection of 110 paintings was auctioned off for $84,300. The day after the sale it was reported that Crucifixion by the Romans had been bought for Peter Alexandroff, ostensibly for a Russian church. By 1899 the work was on view at the Brooklyn Museum, lent by Mr. John W. Brown. An article in The Collector and Art Critic devoted to American private collections describes Mr Brown as 'an active business man, whose tastes lead him, after the arduous toil of vast interests, to seek quiet enjoyment in the possession and study in such works of art as appeal to him'. The same article tells of how two of Mr Brown's Vereshchagins are 'on view in the Brooklyn Art Museum: here, however there is kept one of the greatest of Verestchagin's works. It is the large canvas The Crucifixion in which the multitude of typical humanity surges around the foot of the hill and against the city wall, while up above the tragedy of the world is enacted. It is an overpowering example, less theatrical than Munkácsy's famous painting, and shows that masterly handling with technical perfection which has raised the artist to be the foremost exponent of Muscovite art'. The painting was presented officially to the Brooklyn Museum in 1906 by Mrs Lilla Brown, in memory of her husband.
In any study of Vereshchagin's work written before or after the Russian Revolution, the trilogy of paintings he called 'An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth', stands as one of the major undertakings of his career - arguably, it is the single project which exerted the greatest hold on his imagination and his ambitions. Having first addressed the subject of the Crucifixion in 1869 four years before his excursion to Palestine, the series in its entirety was conceived in 1876 and its completion a dream of Vereshchagin's for over a decade, until the final canvas, Crucifixion by the Romans, was finished in 1887. The theme that connects the three works - extremes of capital punishment under three of the greatest territorial empires the world has ever known, the Roman, the British and Vereshchagin's own, the Russian - is emphasised by the works' titles. Each work symbolically illustrates the moment of the greatest ethical test each empire had faced, lamenting the brutality of the state while poignantly depicting the unchanging humanity that connects people and populations across vast expanses of time and geographical territory. In response to the criticism the artist faced from the English and Russians for his trilogy - his response was 'A hundred years hence they will be appreciated: the pictures will live'. Over a century later, Vereshchagin's prophesy has been realised, the fact that the location of one of the three works is currently unknown only underlining the appearance at auction of Vereshchagin's masterpiece Crucifixion by the Romans as a truly seminal event in auction history.
Renowned for his insightful, on occasion painfully so, scenes depicting and interrogating the nature and behaviour of mankind, Vereshchagin's decision to portray the death of man's Saviour at the hands of the saved on such a colossal sale and with such virtuosity represents a culmination of his life's philosophy - an ever-present antithesis to the loss of human life. This philosophical position is of course famously expressed in his iconic work The Apotheosis of War.
As the pre-eminent Russian Orientalist of the 19th century, Vereshchagin's superlative talent combined with his predilection for universally relevant subject matter ensured that his exhibitions were considered major cultural events in Paris, London, Berlin, Moscow, St Petersburg, New York and Vienna, attracting thousands upon thousands of visitors. Revered in the Russian Empire, in whose successor states today entire museum galleries are devoted to his works - in the State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow and the Museum of Russian Art, Kiev, by the 1891 New York auction, Vereshchagin's success had expanded far beyond the borders of Russia. The Daily Telegraph branded him 'a great artist'; The Times wrote of his 'genius' for painting; the famous French critic Claretti wrote in Le Figaro that Vereshchagin was 'an individual who stands out from the common ranks, I know no second such a gifted nature amongst artists'; the Deutsches Montagsblatt enthused, 'When you happen upon [his] transfixing paintings, it unwillingly enters your head that here before us is the highest of what human creativity, human art, can achieve'; and Harper's Weekly insisted that his work 'is one of those contemporary miracles; no other modern artist has created such a multitude of inspiring and elevating paintings'.
One of a series of three works devoted to the subject of capital punishment, Crucifixion by the Romans (1887) was preceded by Blowing from guns in British India and Hanging in Russia. At the crux of this trilogy, which he entitled 'An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth', lay Vereshchagin's condemnation of the hypocrisy of a state's punishment of individuals fighting for their beliefs, set against the simultaneous backdrop of international warfare and imperialism. The artist's intentions are best-expressed in his own words, and as such merit quoting in full:
'Observing life through all my various travels, I have been particularly struck by the fact that even in our time people kill one another under all possible pretexts, and by every possible means. Wholesale murder is still called war, while killing individuals is called execution. Everywhere the same worship of brute strength, the same inconsistency; on the one hand men slaying their fellows by the million for an idea often impracticable, are elevated to a high pedestal of public admiration: on the other, men who kill individuals for a crust of bread, are mercilessly and promptly exterminated - and this even in Christian countries, in the name of Him whose teaching was founded on peace and love. These facts, observed on many occasions, made a strong impression on my mind, and after carefully having thought the matter over, I painted several pictures of wars and executions.'
Careful to avoid sanctimony, Vereshchagin is quick to note: 'These subjects I have treated in a fashion far from sentimental, having myself killed many a poor fellow-creature in different wars, I have not the right to be sentimental'. A certain political motivation for this trilogy is also discernable, the chronological culmination of which is represented by Hanging in Russia and poses the question as to why mankind has failed to learn from Christ's death in the almost two millennia since the event. Vereshchagin himself felt persecuted by the Russian authorities at this time, his letters to his friend and the eminent critic Vladimir Stasov, frequently expressing a strong desire to return to Russia combined with his acknowledgement of the impossibility of doing so and continuing to paint as he wished.
Blowing from Guns in British India, the earliest work in the series, depicting the 1857 suppression of the Indian uprising by the British, was inspired by the artist's first trip to India. Vereshchagin was deeply moved by what he perceived to be the plight of a great and ancient people at the hands of the colonialists, and tackled the issue in a series of paintings. In the summer of 1876 Vereshchagin began to consider the composition of the work and the attire of his intended subjects. However he was interrupted by the outbreak of the Russo-Turkish War and temporarily abandoned the topic in favour of this conflict. His first-hand observations as a staff member of General Skobelev's (1843-1882) entourage strengthened his disdain for bloodshed and in late October 1882, he set off on his second trip to India, once again fixated on the creation of this painting. In January, he wrote to Stasov from India, declaring 'Indian subjects do not interest me, I came here however to paint one in particular, which will get under the skin of more than one Englishman'. Andrei Lebedev's monograph on the artist ascribes Vereshchagin's renewed interest in the project to the assassination of the Alexander II in March 1881 by the terrorist organisation The People's Will, the response to which by his son and successor, Alexander III, provided the subject of the second work in the series, Hanging in Russia. At the end of 1883, in preparation for the third and final painting in the series, Crucifixion by the Romans, Vereshchagin set off with his wife to explore Palestine. Almost obsessively determined to create an archaeologically accurate depiction, the trip was intended to allow the artist to gather materials and make extensive sketches of local types. 'With the same characteristic ardour and tireless energy that marked his previous explorations, he [Vereshchagin] delved deep into the artistic treasures of the Holy Land. Months and months were passed amidst the crumbling ruins and among the pilgrims of all nationalities, until he has secured data, not simply for the creation of his subsequent masterpieces, but also to support his religious and artistic convictions'. The artist returned to Paris with a tremendous number of sketches of modern Palestinian life and the local people, ready to commence work on such masterpieces as Solomon's Wall (fig. 4) and Crucifixion by the Romans.
Of monumental size, the work was painted in Paris in Vereshchagin's studio which was particularly designed for the execution of over-size canvasses. Some years earlier, Vereshchagin's determination to paint on a grandiose scale provoked a row between Vereshchagin and Stasov. The critic lamented the artist's requirement of a new large and expensive studio and felt moreover that works of this size was more difficult to sell and that the size of a work had no relation to its significance. Vereshchagin took great offence at Stasov's words and responded with a sharp retort. Certainly, he paid no attention to the critic's warning and continued to execute large-scale works. Indeed the inside cover of the exhibition catalogue accompanying the 1891 auction at the American Art Association includes the following recommendation: 'Owing to the great size of some of the paintings, the Artist suggests that they be viewed from as great a distance as possible'. The power of the present work certainly justifies the large size and calls into question Stasov's suggestion that such an effect could be achieved on a smaller scale.
The composition is undoubtedly striking: in direct contrast to traditional depictions of the Crucifixion at the centre of the work, Vereshchagin positions Christ, illuminated, on the extreme right of the painting, placing the primary emphasis of the composition on the crowd. Indeed the viewer becomes part of the crowd, peering over the hordes of people and horses to see the spectacle. While Lebedev points out the poetic contrast between the muscular physique of the crucified men flanking Christ (the Good and Bad Thieves) and the slight, frail body of the mortal Saviour, there is little to distinguish Christ or to suggest His glory, save the crown of thorns. A large expanse of dark sky stretches across the horizontal, the city wall looms heavy over a crowd of traders, Pharisees and a distraught group of Christ's supporters. In the foreground, Roman soldiers with their spears and lances stand ready to quieten disorder. Two officials are elevated above the crowd, talking calmly with a Roman solider on the hill. Studies for the work indicate that Vereshchagin considered alternative compositions for the subject. One study on canvas, entitled Jerusalem, locates Golgotha deep in the background, with the crowd of people immediately surrounding it equally almost impossible to make out. The city wall is low and located far from the hill. The final composition is resoundingly considered the most successful.
It is important to understand Vereshchagin's interest in Biblical subject matter within the context of 19th century Orientalism and the general surge of interest in the archaeology of the Holy Land. Ernest Renan's (1823-1892) work The Life of Christ, which first appeared in English in 1863 and sought to examine the historical history of Christ and which we know from letters to his wife was read by Vereshchagin, was widely read and highly influential. In 1847 the first Russian Orthodox Ecclesiastical Mission in Jerusalem was sent to conduct archaeological research and facilitate pilgrimages from Russia to the Holy Land. The Mission subsequently acquired land in Palestine, organising Slavonic Orthodox services for the several hundred Russian pilgrims that were travelling to the Holy Land every year by this time. The numbers increased dramatically following the Crimean War (1853-1856). No longer permitted to maintain a navy in the Black Sea, the Russians launched a commercial shipping company, with the purpose of providing employment for those formerly serving in the Navy. Pilgrimages to the Holy Land were promoted heavily and successfully, to the extent that some 10,000 citizens of the Russian Empire were making this journey annually by the end of the century. In 1882 the Imperial Orthodox Palestinian Society was founded under the leadership of Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich (1857-1905), son of the Emperor. The society assisted the Mission, dedicating itself to the promotion of Christianity throughout the Middle East. In addition to the foundation of over 100 schools for this purpose, the society also subsidised travel to the Holy Land for workers and peasants who made up the majority of pilgrims. Against this backdrop, Vereshchagin was one of a number of late-19th century European artists - amongst them the Victorian William Holman Hunt and Vereshchagin's own teacher Jean-Léon Gérôme - who were determined to bring a new historical and archaeological accuracy to the depiction of sacred events.
Like the academic work of archaeologists shedding new light on the everyday life of Christ's contemporaries, Vereshchagin's preoccupation with realism infuses all of his finest work with a sense of vitality and fresh air. Motivated by a great desire to effect cultural accuracy in his work, at his 1887 exhibition at London's Grosvenor Gallery, where the trilogy was exhibited, he also displayed ethnographic artefacts related to the lands he had visited and painted: Tibetan prayer wheels, a drinking-cup made from a human skull, Russian and Turkish arms, the root of an ancient cypress from a quarry under the old temple of Jerusalem, and a wealth of other treasures. Vereshchagin's attention to detail, combined with his perceptive emotional insight, is employed to glorious effect in Crucifixion by the Romans. His essay 'On Progress in Art' laments the continued tradition of a lack of realism in religious painting, 'the manner of placing God and the Saints on clouds, as though these were chairs and stools, and not substances whose physical condition is well known to us'. While praising the old masters for their technique, he simultaneously lambasts their willingness to ignore the historical realities: 'For instance in the representation of the Apostles, whose personalities are so clear and convincing in the Gospels, we recognise in their forms, face and attitudes - particularly in Titian's pictures - not modest humble fisherman, but fine Italian models of athletic appearance'. Vereshchagin was determined to address religious subject matter with the same degree of realism he advocated in all his work: 'Can anyone say that I am careless about the types, about the costumes, about the landscape of the scenes represented by me? That I don't actually study out beforehand the personages, the surrounding figuring in my works? Hardly so. Can anyone say that, with me, any scene taking place in reality in the broad sunlight had been painted by studio light - that a scene, taking place under the frosty skies of the North, is reproduced in the warm inclosure [sic] of four walls. Hardly so' . As such, in accordance with the Synoptic gospels, which tell of 'the sixth hour, and there was a darkness over all the earth until the ninth hour. And the sun was darkened, and the veil of the temple was rent in the midst', Vereshchagin made a point of painting the Crucifixion during the hours of darkness.
He was not alone in this desire. Ivan Kramskoy's Christ in the Wilderness and Vasilii Polenov's The Virgin Spring in Nazareth, preceded Crucifixion by the Romans, which in turn surely influenced Ilya Repin's even grizzlier and more realist Golgotha. While his subsequent evangelical works, The Holy Family and The Resurrection of Christ were condemned by the Catholic Church and branded irreverent, Vereshchagin maintained that 'Realism is not antagonistic to anything that is held dear to the contemporary man - it does not clash with common sense, with science, nor with religion. Can anyone have anything but the deepest reverence for the teachings of Christ concerning the Father and Creator of all that exists - to the golden rule of Christian charity?'. Lebedev, writing under Soviet academic conditions, argues that the artist was 'an atheist without doubt', an interpretation which demands scrutiny and would seem to contradict Vereshchagin's own statements in response to the attack on his work by the Church. Although Vereshchagin's son reveals in his memoirs that the family didn't go to church or observe the fast, it would appear that the artist who wrote to Stasov 'I respect Christ but I hardly follow his rules' was cynical about organised religion but not without a certain faith. The controversial 1881 Vienna exhibition at which The Holy Family and The Resurrection of Christ were exhibited attracted over 110,000 visitors. While Vereshchagin was essentially exhausted by the furore, as he states in the introduction to the 1891 catalogue, 'Facts laid upon canvas without embellishment must speak eloquently for themselves': the artist's talent was always more than sufficient to speak for itself.
Crucifixion by the Romans, along with a number of Vereshchagin's finest paintings, was exhibited in London in 1887 and subsequently at the American Art Galleries in New York in November 1888, where Crucifixion was hung in the largest upper room alongside the two other works in the series. On view in New York for two months, Vereshchagin's American show was an incredible success. From New York the exhibition travelled to Chicago, St Louis, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Boston. During this time, hundreds of thousands of visitors attended the show. When the tour ended in 1891, the works returned to New York City, where the entire collection of 110 paintings was auctioned off for $84,300. The day after the sale it was reported that Crucifixion by the Romans had been bought for Peter Alexandroff, ostensibly for a Russian church. By 1899 the work was on view at the Brooklyn Museum, lent by Mr. John W. Brown. An article in The Collector and Art Critic devoted to American private collections describes Mr Brown as 'an active business man, whose tastes lead him, after the arduous toil of vast interests, to seek quiet enjoyment in the possession and study in such works of art as appeal to him'. The same article tells of how two of Mr Brown's Vereshchagins are 'on view in the Brooklyn Art Museum: here, however there is kept one of the greatest of Verestchagin's works. It is the large canvas The Crucifixion in which the multitude of typical humanity surges around the foot of the hill and against the city wall, while up above the tragedy of the world is enacted. It is an overpowering example, less theatrical than Munkácsy's famous painting, and shows that masterly handling with technical perfection which has raised the artist to be the foremost exponent of Muscovite art'. The painting was presented officially to the Brooklyn Museum in 1906 by Mrs Lilla Brown, in memory of her husband.
In any study of Vereshchagin's work written before or after the Russian Revolution, the trilogy of paintings he called 'An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth', stands as one of the major undertakings of his career - arguably, it is the single project which exerted the greatest hold on his imagination and his ambitions. Having first addressed the subject of the Crucifixion in 1869 four years before his excursion to Palestine, the series in its entirety was conceived in 1876 and its completion a dream of Vereshchagin's for over a decade, until the final canvas, Crucifixion by the Romans, was finished in 1887. The theme that connects the three works - extremes of capital punishment under three of the greatest territorial empires the world has ever known, the Roman, the British and Vereshchagin's own, the Russian - is emphasised by the works' titles. Each work symbolically illustrates the moment of the greatest ethical test each empire had faced, lamenting the brutality of the state while poignantly depicting the unchanging humanity that connects people and populations across vast expanses of time and geographical territory. In response to the criticism the artist faced from the English and Russians for his trilogy - his response was 'A hundred years hence they will be appreciated: the pictures will live'. Over a century later, Vereshchagin's prophesy has been realised, the fact that the location of one of the three works is currently unknown only underlining the appearance at auction of Vereshchagin's masterpiece Crucifixion by the Romans as a truly seminal event in auction history.