Vereshchagin graduated first in his list at the naval school, but left the service immediately to begin the study of drawing in earnest.

He gave another exhibition of his works in St. Petersburg in 1874, where two of his paintings, namely, The Apotheosis of War, dedicated "to all conquerors, past, present and to come," and Left Behind, the picture of a dying soldier deserted by his fellows,[2] were denied a showing on the grounds that they portrayed the Russian military in a poor light.

In late 1874, Vereshchagin departed in Northern and Eastern Asia for an extensive tour of the Himalayas, British India, Mongolia, and Tibet, spending over two years in travel.

With the start of the Second Russo-Turkish War, Vereshchagin left Paris and returned to active service with the Imperial Russian Army.

[2] When Suppression of the Indian Revolt by the English was first exhibited, many in America and Britain believed that it depicted executions of sepoys carried out by tying victims to the barrels of guns.

Vereshchagin's detractors argued that such executions had only occurred in the Indian Rebellion of 1857, but the painting depicted modern soldiers of the 1880s, implying that the practice was then current.

The 1812 series on Napoleon's Russian campaign, on which Vereshchagin also wrote a book, seems to have been inspired by Tolstoi's War and Peace, and was painted in 1893 in Moscow, where the artist eventually settled.

On April 13, 1904, Petropavlovsk struck two mines while returning to Port Arthur and sank, taking with it most of the crew, including both Admiral Makarov and Vereshchagin.