Nikolay Roerich [antikvár]

Nikolay Konstantinovich Roerich was an artist of versatile talents who lived an eventful life. He spent his first forty years in Russia, the land of his birth, devoted several years to expeditions into the countries of Central Asia and lived the last twenty years of his life in India. Roerich is known not only as an artist; he was an archaeologist, scholar, writer, poet, and a person of note in public affairs as well. He was not indifferent to the social problems of his day, being deeply sensitive to the destinies of his native land and her people. His world outlook, however, mirrored many of the contradictions of the epoch, and he saw the solution to the problem of reshaping society solely in the field of ethics, assigning the decisive role to education. Roerich's belief in the transforming powers of science and the arts induced him to devote much time and effort to the dissemination of knowledge on the culture of the past. N. Roerich was born in 1874 into the family of a lawyer in St. Petersburg. He evinced an interest in art and history in his childhood years. On graduating from the Academy of Arts, where he studied under the well-known landscapist A. Kuinji, and having simultaneously completed his studies at the faculty of law of the University, the young man of manifold talents decided to dedicate himself to art. V. Stasov, an outstanding connoisseur of ancient Russian culture and a man who deeply influenced the artistic life of the country, encouraged Roerich's interest in the Russian past and acquainted him with a wealth of historical and ethnographical materials pertaining to ancient Russia. Roerich's very first works attracted the attention of prominent personalities in the world of art. The great Russian painter llya Repin noted his artistic capabilities. One of the artist's first canvases, The Messenger (1897), was acquired by P. Tretyakov for his picture gallery. Sitting in a boat is a tired old man, a messenger, with a doleful expression on his face. The message he is carrying is one of woe: "Nation has risen against nation." Roerich in his canvases did not attempt to illustrate actual historical events; he created, rather, a specific type of pictures of the past poeticizing the life of the ancient Slavs: the military campaigns, the building of new towns, the development of new lands, the hunting. This world is depicted in the pictures Vladimir's Foray into Korsun (1900), Guests from Overseas (1902), and The Slavs on the Dnieper (1905). The stylistic peculiarities of Roerich's compositions help the viewer to see a singular world: enormous, sturdy and strong are both the animate and inanimate forms in his pictures. His ships with heavy sails, his hills and mountains, his human figures all seem to be carved out of stone. The vivid colours with but a few combinations, the smooth unbroken contours of the objects, the calm rhythm of the massive forms—all these are conducive to creating an impression of clarity and monumentality. One cannot help noting, however, the artist's idealization of the distant past. He imparted to that world a harmony and beauty which he failed to find in modern bourgeois society. The urge to flee into the past from the tragic contradictions of the life around him was common to many artists of his generation—Nesterov, Somov, Benois, Riabushkin, Bori-sov-Musatov. Well versed in the culture of the Stone Age and in old Russian art, Roerich brought to the attention of his contemporaries the keen perception of beauty evinced, in his belief, by the ancients. "Place a stone implement beside any beautiful thing—it will not impair the general impression. It will lend the picture a note of calm and dignity," he said. Roerich was of the opinion that the works of art of the Stone Age have high artistic value. He had a special admiration for the art of Russia. "When you look at the decorative painting of ancient times, the old