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| Keywords: Snegurochka by Nicholas Roerich 06.jpg The Palace of Tsar Berendey a Set Design for A Ostrovsky's Fairytale Snegurochka signed with a monogram and dated 1912 further inscribed 1500 and numbered N9 on the reverse Tempera on board 55 5 by 71 cm 350 000-500 000 GBP Provenance Roerich Museum New York USA 1919-1935 Collection of Luis and Nettie Horch New York USA Thence by descent Private collection USA Exhibited World of Art Exhibition St Petersburg Moscow Kiev 1912-1913 labels on the reverse Baltic Exhibition Malmö Sweden 15 May-4 October 1914 label on the reverse Rörich Separatutställning Roerich Personal Exhibition Gummesons Konsthall Stockholm Sweden 10-30 November 1918 Rörich Maleriudstilling Roerich Exhibition of Paintings Kunsthadel Henry Schou Copenhagen Denmark 1919 Nicholas Roerich Taidenäyttely Nicholas Roerich Art Exhibition Salon Strindberg Helsinki 1919 The Nicholas Roerich Exhibition Kingor Galleries New York NY; Boston Art Club Boston MA; Albright Art Gallery Buffalo NY; Art Institute Chicago Il; St Louis City Art Museum Saint Louis MO; Museum of Art San Francisco CA; Fine Arts Society Omaha NE; Kansas City Art Institute Kansas City MO; Cleveland Museum of Art Cleveland OH; Herron Art Institute Indianapolis IN; Minnesota State Fair MN; Milwaukee Institute of Art Milwaukee WI; Detroit Institute of Art Detroit MI USA 1920-1923 Literature Exhibition catalogue World of Art Exhibition 1st edition St Petersburg 1913 p 20 No 312 Exhibition catalogue World of Art Exhibition Moscow 1913 Exhibition catalogue World of Art Exhibition Kiev 1913 P 11 No 172 A Rostislavov World of Art Exhibition Rech' 1913 15/28 January No 14 mentioned Exhibition catalogue Baltic Exhibition Malmö 1914 p 234 Yu Baltrushaitis A Benois A Gidoni A Remizov S Yaremich Roerich Petrograd Svobodnoye Iskusstvo 1916 p 220 listed Exhibition catalogue Roerich Personal Exhibition Stockholm 1918 No 26 S Ernst N K Roerich Petrograd Obshchina Svyatoi Evgenii 1918 p 122 listed Exhibition catalogue Roerich Exhibition of Paintings Copenhagen 1919 No 26 Exhibition catalogue Nicholas Roerich Art Exhibition Helsinki 1919 p 5 C Brinton The Nicholas Roerich Exhibition Catalogue 1920--1921--1922 1st edition New York Redfield-Kendrick-Odell Company Inc 1920 No 66 listed Roerich Himalaya New York Brentano's Publishers 1926 p 192 listed Roerich Museum Catalogue New York 1st edition 1930 p 14 No 66 A Yaremenko Nikolai Konstantinovich Roerich His Life and Work During the Past Forty Years 1889-1929 New York Central Book Trading Co 1931 p 31 listed Roerich Museum Catalogue New York 6th edition 1960 p 14 No 66 E Yakovleva Teatral'no-Dekoratsionnoe Iskusstvo N K Rerikha Samara AGNI 1996 p 160 No 139 illustrated 1912 was one of the most prolific years for Nicholas Roerich as a set designer He worked on Stravinski's Le Sacre du Printemps Ibsen's Peer Gynt Wagner's Tristan and Isolda and Ostrovsky's Snegurochka By this time he had established a reputation for creating innovative set designs Contemporary critics praised Roerich for his ability to capture the spirit of each theatrical work through original yet historically precise means Ostrovsky's play which was chosen as the opening act for a new theater in St Petersburg was his second involvement with this popular Russian fairy tale; in 1908 he designed décors for Rimsky-Korsakov's opera Snegurochka for the Opéra Comique in Paris Those first sketches were not used in the final production and Roerich reworked many of them for Ostrovsky's play He made about ten sketches for the play which were first exhibited at the World of Art yearly exhibition in 1912 The influential critic Rostislavsky described the Snegurochka sketches as exemplary of Roerich's multifaceted and astute perceptivity and praised the strikingly beautiful and gay Palace The leading present-day authority on Roerich's theatrical work Yelena Yakovleva notes that the composition of The Palace of Tsar Berendey carries on the traditions of Viktor Vasnetsov Roerich's ardent passion for Russian wooden architecture detailed knowledge of its interiors workmanship and finishing help the artist to create a cogent milieu for the personages of this fairy tale According to Yakovleva the sketches for Snegurochka reflect true historical context instead of depicting pseudo antiquity and puppet pomposity Yakovleva ibid p 60 Snegurochka takes place in some distant past among the people ruled by the wise tsar Berendey This particular décor is for first scene in the second act which opens with tsar Berendey sitting on a golden chair and painting the central column in colour The architecture is typical of the houses of early Russian tsars and nobility Roerich used the same style of interiors in his décors for Prince Igor and Kikimora While the structure is historically accurate the colours and ornamentation come from Roerich's imagination The exuberant reds and yellows create a festive fairy-tale atmosphere Unlike Roerich's later meditative mountain landscapes his theater décors are meant to capture the imagination of a large audience while staying true to the play's metaphysical and national characteristics We are grateful to Gvido Trepša Senior researcher at the Nicholas Roerich Museum New York for providing catalogue information The Palace of Tsar Berendey painted as a finished easel work belongs to the golden treasury of Nicholas Roerich's theatre designs Along with Urochishche which is in the Russian Museum Forest in the Tretyakov Gallery and Village of Berendey in a private collection Palace of Tsar Berendey is a wonderful design for the 1912 production of Ostrovsky's Snegurochka The Snow Maiden at the Reineke St Petersburg Drama Theatre Nicholas Roerich designed four stage designs for Snegurochka for both the opera and theatre in St Petersburg London and Chicago in 1908 1912 1919 and 1921 His first Snegurochka designs were for Rimsky-Korsakov's opera version for the Opéra Comique in Paris which was never performed The 1912 sketches largely followed the designs for that ill-fated production transporting the audience into the fairy-tale world of pagan Rus Roerich was by that time already a recognised stage designer and these designs promised to be sensational It was not without cause that the Evening Time newspaper of 13 July 1912 made special mention of the fact that Roerich � is about to embark on the set and costume designs and the whole scenography of Snegurochka Roerich's monumental style of painting was ideally matched to the play - the poetic content of which is an artistic enactment of the ancient cult of the sun which has left a deep mark on the national consciousness As a result the artist made a thorough study of the ancient sources of the solar legend of Snegurochka when working on the designs for the production He wanted to combine the fantasy of Ostrovsky's tale with the pagan spirit of Tsar Berendey and his subjects in whom Roerich could see a mystical tribe that had migrated to northern Rus from the East In his treatment of Snegurochka he combined and superimposed on one another many elements which had influenced Russia Byzantium Tsar Berendey and life at his court the East a merchant guest Mizgir and Spring flying in from warmer lands the North Frost the Snow Maiden wood spirits He recorded these features from Byzantine and ancient Russian culture on the heavy arches of Berendey's palace in traditional bright red and green decorative murals His designs for the tale of the Snow Maiden -the daughter of Spring and Frost who after falling in love with the young merchant guest Mizgir is melted by the sun god Yarilo - feature the undulating hills birch forests lakes meandering rivers of the northern Russian landscape But the stage design did not just serve as a picturesque backdrop to the unfolding plot rather as with many of Roerich's pictures he captured and embossed upon them the ancient pantheistic spirit of nature in which every stone and every tree seemed to have a soul Roerich valued his work on this production very highly and showed Snegurochka several times in major Russian and international exhibitions On the back of the picture there are still labels from the 1912 exhibition of the World of Art society the celebrated 1914 Baltic Exhibition in Malmö and the artist's solo exhibition in San Francisco in 1930 - and this is just a part of the glittering exhibition history of Berendey's reign http //macdougallauction com/Indexx asp id 17201 lx a 1912 Roerich PD-RusEmpire Files uploaded by Shakko from various sources Snegurochka opera by Roerich MacDougall's Fine Art Auctions | ||||
