Jermaks Eroberung Sibiriens

Surikov was a Siberian Cossack, born in Krasnoyarsk, and he believed his own forebears had come east with Yermak, so in a sense this was family history. The canvas is enormous, nearly six meters wide, and he worked on it for four years, finishing in 1895. It shows the decisive clash of 1582, when Yermak's small Cossack band, packed into boats under their banners and firing muskets, met the far larger forces of Khan Kuchum on the Irtysh River. Surikov massed the two sides into dense, almost colliding walls of men. Tsar Nicholas II bought the painting, and in 1897 it went to the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg, where it hangs today.