Return from Petrovsky palace

Held at the Museum of the Patriotic War of 1812, 'Return from Petrovsky Palace' depicts the Grande Armée's return to Moscow from Napoleon's temporary refuge at Petrovsky Palace in late September 1812, after the fires that had initially forced him out had partly subsided. The return to a burned and largely empty Moscow — rather than to the triumphal conquest Napoleon had anticipated — was a somber moment in the campaign's psychological history. The troops re-entering the ruined city found no food, no shelter adequate for the winter, and no prospect of peace. Vereshchagin's attention to this episode — the anti-climactic return rather than the dramatic entry — is characteristic of his interest in the un-celebrated, unglorious moments of military history. The Museum of the Patriotic War of 1812 assembled his complete 1812 series as the most authoritative artistic treatment of the campaign.

A column of troops moving through a landscape of ruins gave Vereshchagin both a processional compositional structure and the visual contrast between the living army and the destroyed city. His handling of moving military columns was refined through extensive practice in his Central Asian and Balkans series, and he could render the mass and texture of an army on the move with assured economy.