Jaroslav Věšín

After 1904 Jaroslav Věšín held an unusual post, head painter to the Bulgarian Ministry of War. It meant he followed the army, and when the First Balkan War broke out in 1912 he turned its fighting into some of the most reproduced images in Bulgarian art.

He had come to it by a roundabout road. Born in Bohemia, in the Czech lands of the Austrian Empire, he trained at the academies of Prague and Munich and first made his name with quiet scenes of Slovak village life. In 1897 he was invited to Bulgaria and stayed for the rest of his life, teaching at the National Academy of Arts in Sofia before taking up the war-ministry role.

His battle canvases are his lasting legacy. The Samara Flag of 1911 shows the banner presented to Bulgarian volunteers in the war of 1877 that freed the country from Ottoman rule, and works like Onslaught and the Turkish retreat at Lüleburgaz recorded the campaigns of 1912 and 1913 with a plain, close realism. Several of his pupils, among them the painter Nikola Petrov, went on to become notable names in Bulgarian art. Věšín died in Sofia in 1915.