After his Asiatic campaign he had three years’ work at Munich, an enormous and improbable labour, so much so that his enemies insinuated that such a number and variety of pictures could not be the work of a single man, and that Verestchagin had been helped by German painters. The calumny reached St. Petersburg, where he was exhibiting at the time. At his request the Art Society of Munich opened a thorough inquiry into the matter. Models, porters, everybody that knew anything about it, testified on oath that no painter but Verestchagin had so much as entered the _atelier_. The report, covered all over with the best signatures of Munich, and with a postscript of the most flattering kind, was sent on to the Russian capital. When they gave Verestchagin the surname of the Horace Vernet of Russia, no doubt they thought they were saying something in his praise; but he certainly had a right to feel calumniated, for the general impression left by his work is not admiration for princes nor glorification of war. In telling the truth feelingly about the sufferings of the soldier, without distinction of nationality, with as much pity for the vanquished as for the victors, Verestchagin has shown himself essentially human. His pictures, with their poignant reality and elevated philosophy, are at the same time a terrible satire on ambitious despots. Verestchagin is a courtier of nothing but misfortune. A pupil of Gérome, he seems to have travelled very much in search of himself. Sometimes he has drawn near to Meissonier, then there is something in him of Géricault and of Courbet, and again he is a true Impressionist in the best acceptation of the term. As a traveller he saw Samarcand when the sight was almost as rare and strange as that from the famous “peak in Darien.” “Samarcand,” he says, “was occupied by the Russians. Our armies had taken it without assault, after having routed the troops of the Emir. On reaching the summit of the hill I stopped there, dazzled, and, so to speak, awed by astonishment and admiration. Samarcand was there under my eyes, bathed in verdure. Above its gardens and its houses were reared ancient and gigantic mosques, and I who had come from so far was going to enter the city, once so splendid, which was the capital of Tamerlane.”