Blowing from Guns in British India

Common card · No. 448395

Blowing from Guns in British India, sometimes shortened to Blowing from Guns, was a painting (presumed destroyed) by the Russian artist Vasily Vereshchagin. The painting depicts the execution of Namdhari Sikhs by being "blown from a gun" in January, 1872. A work of Orientalist art, the painting was produced by Vereshchagin as part of a trilogy of works depicting capital punishment, titled Eye for Eye, Tooth for Tooth. When the work was exhibited in the 1880s, audiences mistakenly believed that it showed sepoys being executed in the aftermath of the Indian Rebellion of 1857. This misconception persists; Vereshchagin never corrected the mistake, while some period newspapers correctly identified the subject matter. Vereshchagin's English-language exhibition catalogs referred to the painting as Blowing from Guns in British India, but it is now misleadingly known as Suppression of the Indian Revolt by the English.

Read on Wikipedia · Image The American Art Association of New York / Vassili Vereshchagin, Public domain