Vasily Perov. Pugachev's Judgement

Vasily Perov's "Pugachev's Judgement" shows the reprisal that Yemelyan Pugachev, leader of the peasant war of 1773–1775, metes out to noblemen and the tsar's soldiers. This canvas of 1875 is the first version of the painting. Its last version, painted in 1879, is in the Russian Museum, and two sketches for the first version are in the Tretyakov Gallery.

In the early 1870s Perov conceived a triptych on the Pugachev rebellion: the life of peasants under the landowners, the revolt itself, and the judgement of the nobles. Gathering material, he travelled to the places where the uprising had once raged — the Volga region, the Orenburg province and the Ural region. Only the third part was realised, and the artist painted it in several versions.

Pugachev, a Don Cossack, proclaimed himself Emperor Peter III in 1773 and waged war against the nobility; in 1775 he was executed in Moscow on Bolotnaya Square. In the painting he sits on a porch surrounded by his associates, with captives and a crowd before him, while a gallows and the glow of a fire can be seen in the distance.