3-053-715 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

"A Khirgese Camp", from Wereschagin's pictures of Central Asia, at the Crystal Palace, 1873. Engraving of a painting. 'Basil Wereschagin, the Russian artist whose pictures of scenery and costumes in Central Asia have lately been exhibited at the Crystal Palace, was born in 1842... Having won the silver medal...[at] the Academy of Fine Arts at St. Petersburg...he gladly accepted the kind offer of the Governor of Turkistan, General Kaufmann...to visit Central Asia..."It is only after examining M. Wereschagin's studies that we can appreciate the value of his pictures as records of a little-known region, of unfamiliar and strangely-blended races of uncouth nomenclature - Kirghiz, Solone, Dungan, Uzbek, Kipchak, Sart, Tadjik, and Sibo - and of a life divided between the peaceful occupations of the cattle-breeding nomad and the savagery of the irreclaimable freebooter. We are introduced to the humble originals of [a] widespread Eastern architectural type in the domed and felt-covered steppe habitation of the Kirghese...We assist at the migrations of the Tartar herdsmen, with their long-haired, two-humped camels and their laden cattle, from the steppes to the snow-line with the changing seasons'. From "Illustrated London News", 1873.