http://www.monstersoft.com/tutorial1/VESA_intro.html
you can find in google more about (string: "VESA programming").....
you can spy the source code of some emulators, like ZSNES DOS, that uses VESA 1 and VESA 2....
i believe you can find more easy VESA + Linux than VESA + DOS, coz the X enviroment have some VESA drivers (if SVGA fail to you, like the old S3 cards failed to me in redhat installations)
i'm not a experienced DOS programmer, but i never see VESA + C/C++, the old versions of Zsnes have used ASM for many years (games too), only in recent versions 1.0+ they're converting to C/C++.