Before starting to work on the project Vereshchagin set off to the Philippines, the former combat area. As the painter’s son wrote later, his father visited battle sites, talked to war veterans and made “many sketches of the terrain, portrayed local characters and American soldiers”.

Letter to mother, the painting from the museum collection, comes third in the series. Here the soldier is already lying flat on the hospital bed, with the nurse writing down a letter he tries to dictate. Seeking to truthfully convey the girl’s emotions, the artist worked through fine details of her facial expressions — now tender and attentive, now worried, and now deeply in grief. Vereshchagin’s model for the nurse was his second wife Lidiya Vasilyevna; she posed for the picture wearing genuine nurse uniform Vereshchagin had brought from the Philippines together with a genuine hospital bed. Modeling for the soldier was Vereshchagin’s servant Vasily Platonov.