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Item Description / Dealer Expertise
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In 1915 Nicholai Konstantinovich Roerich became ill with pneumonia and was ordered by his doctor to convalesce with his family in Sortavala, Finland (then part of the Russian Empire, under the Grand Duchy of Finland). However, by 1917 a return to Russia had became difficult with the onset of the revolution, and Roerich and his family remained in Finland, (which had become an independent country), where Roerich began working as an émigré artist. It was here that he painted Knight of the Morning in 1918. Knight the of the Morning belongs to the important early cycle series Eternal Knight, Eques Æternus, of which Knight of the Evening is a further example.
Between 1907 and 1921 Roerich had also composed and completed a collection of sixty-four poems, published in Russian, collectively called Flowers of Morya (subsequently published in English as Flame in Chalice). By examining the collection, in many ways we can have a better understanding of Roerich’s search for spirituality, as well as the symbols and meanings that lie behind some of his paintings.
The road to spirituality is key, and in Roerich’s work there is the recurring theme of the continuous cycle of beginning and end, such as the reincarnation of the soul. When describing a landscape in his poems, Roerich is not specific to a country or region, rather his poems are generic to that spatial object, be it a town or mountain. Therefore it may be that the landscape of Knight of the Morning is not specific to Finland, rather, what Roerich draws from Finland is found in his use of Nordic hues such as the calm blues, which give the work an esoteric and peaceful tone.
>Sacred Signs is part of the first cycle of poems in Flowers of Morya, and it is perhaps in the poem Zavtra (Tomorrow) that we can find some further understanding in the Eternal Knight series, and Knight of the Morning. Here, alternating days, nights and mornings become metaphors for the themes of life, death and rebirth:
‘Only yesterday I knew much,
but it became obscured in the course
of the night.
Indeed, the day had been long.
Long and dark was the night.
Then came the fragrant morning. Fresh and marvelous it was.
And, illumined by the new sun,
I forgot and was deprived of that
which I had accumulated.’
-Nikolai Konstantinovich Roerich, Zavtra, taken from Flowers of Morya
Typical of Roerich’s work, Knight of the Morning is stylised and executed with simplified outlines and flat areas of colour, following in the vein of his teacher Arkhip Ivanovich Kuindzhi (1842-1910). Like most other Russians of his generation, Roerich favoured representational images and shunned abstraction; similarly he ignored the realism of ‘The Wanderers’. He blended various influences: Old Russian Revival, French Symbolism, Italian Primitivism, as well as Byzantine and Oriental painting, to achieve a distinctive and monumental style, emphasising atmosphere rather than detail, elements of which can be observed in Knight of the Morning. Roerich began to work with oil, but changed to pastel, and then in 1906 to tempera, the medium in which Knight of the Morning is executed.
The painting Fairest City is the Enemies’ Vexation, for which there is a sketch on the reverse of the present work, was painted prior to the execution of Knight of the Morning. The painting used to be in the private collection of Helena Ivanovna Roerich (1879-1955), however, its present whereabouts are unknown. The fearsome and menacing lapping flames and demons are also central in Roerich’s poem Sacred Signs:
'Flame in chalice!
Father—fire. Son—fire. Spirit—fire.
Three equal. Three indivisible
Flame and heat—are their heart.
The fire—their eyes.
The whirlwind and the flame—their mouth.
Flame of divinity—fire.
The fire will sear the evil ones.
The flame will burn the evil ones.
The flame will stay the evil ones,
Will purify the evil ones.
Bend back the arrows of the demons.
Let the poison of the serpent descend upon the evil ones!'
-Nikolai Konstantinovich Roerich, Sacred Signs, taken from Flowers of Morya
Roerich was a painter, stage designer and founder of cultural institutions. Born in 1874, into a middle class family in St. Petersburg, he showed a passionate interest in archaeology, literature and art from an early age. By the age of sixteen he wished to become an artist, but his father’s disapproval led him to enrol simultaneously in both the Imperial Academy of Arts and Faculty of Law at the University of St. Petersburg in 1893. He received the title of ‘artist’ in 1897 and a degree in law the following year. His enthusiasm for music was formed after meeting the prominent writer, critic and historian Vladimir Vasilievich Stasov (1824-1906) in 1895, who introduced him to many of the composers and artists of the time. After graduating, Roerich’s wide intellectual interests made him an integral member of the Russian cultural establishment of the time. As a painter he exhibited with the Academy from 1897 and with the World of Art (Mir Iskusstva) from 1902, the Vienna Secession in around 1905 and the Salon d’Automne, Paris, in 1906. As a stage designer in Russia, he worked between 1907 and 1915 for directors such as Nikolai Nikolayevich Yevreinov (1879-1953), Konstantin Sergeyevich Stanislavsky (1863-1938) and Serge Pavlovich Diaghilev (1872-1929), as well as chairing Diaghilev's ‘World of Art’ society from 1910 to 1916. His best known designs were for Borodin's Prince Igor (1909 and later productions) and The Rite of Spring (1913), the libretto for which he co-created with Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky (1882-1971). The influence of music has been noted in his work, in particular how Roerich related music to the application of colour and to the balancing of colour. Nina Selivanova wrote in The World of Roerich, ‘The original force of Roerich's work consists in a masterly and marked symmetry and a definite rhythm, like the melody of an epic song.’¹
Roerich left Russia after the revolutions in 1917 and worked as an émigré artist in other countries. He lived in Finland and Scandinavia from 1917 to 1919 when he left for England, where he and his wife founded their school of Agni Yoga in March 1920 before travelling to America that same year. Interest in his work led to Roerich being invited to tour his work throughout America by a director at the Chicago Art Institute. A large exhibition of Roerich's art opened in New York in December 1920 and toured to San Francisco and back, in 1921 and early 1922. While in New York he founded the Master Institute of United Arts in 1921 and the International Art Centre a year later. He left the city in 1923, alongside a group of six friends, his wife Helena and their son George, to lead a five year expedition around Central Asia, which in Roerich's own words ‘started from Sikkim through Punjab, Kashmir, Ladakh, the Karakoram Mountains, Khotan, Kashgar, Qara Shar, Urumchi, Irtysh, the Altai Mountains, the Oryot region of Mongolia, the Central Gobi, Kansu, Tsaidam, and Tibet’. He settled at Nagar in the Himalayas where he founded the Himalayan Research Institute in 1929. Roerich was deeply fascinated by Asia, and his considerable interest in Eastern philosophy and religion was translated into his paintings. In 1929, the Roerich Museum was set up in New York to house his paintings, as well as other collections of European and Oriental art. In the same year, Roerich was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, receiving two more nominations in 1932 and 1935. His concern for peace led to the creation of The Roerich Pact, which to this day continues its efforts to protect cultural heritage.
We are grateful to Daniel Entin, director of the Roerich Museum in New York, and Guido Trepsa for providing information on this work.
¹ Selivanova, N., The World of Roerich, Corona Mundi, 1922, p.8.
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