Nikolai Konstantinovich Roerich

A present from the artist to Maxim Gorky, 1915
Bought by Arthur F. Hamann in Riga before 2 January 1936 for 1500 Ls

Petrograd, Mir Iskusstva, 28 February - 29 March 1915, cat.no.229 
Riga, The Nikolai Roerich Museum, October - November 1937

Lukomore magazine, 24 December 1914, no.32
Mir iskusstva exhibition catalogue, 1915, no.229
A.Gidoni Tvorchesky put' Rerikha, Apollon, 1915, no.45. p.1-39, illustrated
Yu.Baltrushaitis et al, Rerikh, Petrograd: Svobodnoe iskusstvo, 1916, p.167 illustrated and listed as 'Collection A.M.Gorky', p.224 listed
S.Ernst, N.K.Rerikh, Petrograd: Obshchina Sv.Evgenii, 1918, pp.101-102,125, listed and illustrated
A. Yaremenko, Nicholai Konstantinovich Roerich, His Life and Creations During the Past Forty Years, New York, Central Book Trading Co., 1931, pl.29
N.Roerich, Zazhigaite serdtsa, Moscow: Molodaya gvardiya, 1990, 3^rd edition, ch.4 Gorky, p.100
Nicholas Roerich: Paintings from the collection of the Latvian State Museum of Art, Riga: Uguns, 1999, p.xxvii-xxxii
V.Knyazeva et al, Rerihk: Prorochestva, Samara: Agni, 2004
Y. Matochkin, Nicholas Roerich, Volume I, Samara, 2008, p.201 illustrated

Structural Condition The artist's board is framed behind glass and I did not remove the board from the framing arrangement and have therefore inspected the painting behind glass. The board appears to be even and secure, although there is evidence of flaking in the past in the lower right corner of the composition where there are small flecks of old paint loss probably due to the dry nature of the artist's materials. Paint surface Inspection under ultraviolet light shows small retouchings, the most significant of which are: 1) two diagonal lines approximately 2 cm and 3 cm in length in the upper right of the composition near the right vertical framing edge, 2) thin lines in the hills in the upper left of the composition, and 3) retouchings in the lower right in the dark pigments corresponding to the areas of paint loss mentioned above. Summary The painting would therefore appear to be in reasonably good condition and would benefit from localised treatment and perhaps minimal retouching of the area in the lower right of the composition.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

The Doomed City belongs to Roerich's so-called 'pre-war' or 'prophetic' series, an extraordinary and dramatic body of work which pre-figured the outbreak of the First World War. Five other paintings from the series were exhibited alongside the present work at the 1915 Mir iskusstva exhibition in Petrograd: Conflagration, Cry of the Serpent, Crowns, Procopius the Righteous Praying, Driving the Clouds away from Veliky Ustyug, Procopius the Righteous Prays for the Unknown Travellers (figs. 2 and 3). When Maxim Gorky visited the exhibition on the 18th February 1915, he was deeply impressed by the series and famously praised Roerich as a 'great intuitivist of modern times'. Of all Roerich's works however, the painting he most craved was The Doomed City, which Roerich subsequently presented to him (see V.Knyazeva et al., Roerich: Prorochestva, Samara: Agni, 2004). 'He wanted my painting very much indeed,' recalled Roerich, 'From the selection then in my possession, he didn't ask for a realistic landscape but a painting from the 'pre-war series', The Doomed City – the canvas which would meet the demands of a poet. Clearly the author of The Stormy Petrel couldn't help but be a poet first and foremost...' (see N.Roerich, Leafs of a Diary and N.Roerich, Zazhigaete Serdtse, Moscow: Molodaya Gvardiya, 1990, 3^rd ed., ch. 4, Gorky, entry for 12 July 1936).

Alexander Ginodi was among the earliest critics to draw attention to Roerich's 'pre-war series' in his 1915 article in Apollon: 'When one recollects all these paintings which Roerich has produced over the last two years, some of which were painted only a few months before the outbreak of World War One, for example The Conflagration, The Doomed City or The Messenger, one experiences a subconscious urge to attribute much in these works to the artist's intuitive premonitions. Because the principal element in these paintings is fire, and one senses that the artist, (...) roaming through a world of creative visions suddenly felt a kind of shockwave. As though in an ancient tale, he pressed his ear to the ground, listened, and heard noise, shouting and commotion in one place, and a great silence elsewhere...  These sensations (...) are revealing, for this is our mood: because we believe in the cry of the snake, we carry the doomed city in our soul and with all our hearts hear the prayer of Procopius the Righteous praying, driving the clouds away from Veliky Ustyug' (A.Gidoni, Tvorchesky Put' Rerikha, Apollon, 1915, no.4-5, p.1-39).

 

But perhaps the most resonant lines written about The Doomed City are by the poet Alexei Remizov (1877-1957) who was inspired by Roerich's apocalyptic series to include the following poem in his cycle of works, Zherlitsa Druzhinnaya (1916), dedicated to Roerich,

The city stood enclosed, wrapped up by the serpent, doomed,
And yet for a long time, nobody knew it nor sensed the evil –
The people ate, drank, married,
And when the hour came to sound the alarm
There was nowhere left to flee!

I know for our sins...
I know many untruths, many sins cry at the sky,
We need to repent of our sins, to atone for our sins.
And you must bless me at the final hour for the sake of the purity of our motherland,
To gently take my doomed share."

In the first editions of early literature on the artist, The Doomed City is listed as belonging to Maxim Gorky (see Yaremenko, 1933). How and when Gorky parted with the painting is unknown. More recent monographs on Roerich list the painting as 'whereabouts unknown'.

The present lot is mentioned in a little-known 1968 article on Gorky's various collecting interests and habit of lending to museums, written in 1968 by an archivist at the Gorky house-museum in Moscow: 'The fate is unknown of two very interesting works belonging to Gorky – a drawing by Ilya Repin for Zazubrina and a picture by Nikolai Roerich, The Doomed City.' (V.Chernukhin, 'Gorky - kollektsioner', Sovetsky kollektioner, no.6, Moscow: Svyaz, 1968, p.5-30).

The theme of the present work appears in two other paintings by Roerich, but neither are plausible candidates for the work that caught Gorky's eye. The first of these was painted in 1914 in watercolour and gouache: The Castle. The Doomed City (fig 4), 24.5 by 43.5cm. This work on paper is in The Omsk Vrubel Museum of Fine Arts, acquired from The State Russian Museum in 1927 and previously in the collection of Zh.L.Rumanova, Petrograd. Not only would the whereabouts of this sketch have been known to Chernukhin in 1968, but as a composition it does not match the drama and poetry of the present work which so clearly appealed to Gorky. The second work is known as The Dead City and is in the Nikolai Roerich Museum in New York, oil on cardboard, 43 by 66cm (fig 5), acquired in 1965, but since this work was painted in 1918 it was obviously not in the 1915 Mir Iskusstva exhibition.  

Although there was no official listing of Gorky's collection, The Gorky Museum's 40 year commemorative edition refers to The Doomed City as a work 'which the writer later parted with' (V dome Gorkogo na Maloi Nikitsky, 2005, p.207), It is erroneously described as a drawing, perhaps because the work was tempera on board rather than oil on canvas.

The painting had in fact been exhibited in Latvia in the interim, though Gorky's Moscow-based biographer was understandably unaware at the time. On 10 October 1937, Roerich's birthday, The Nicholas Roerich Museum in Riga opened its inaugural exhibition. A series of articles were published on the paintings in the exhibition and the new museum, which note that The Doomed City, or as it was known in Latvian, Aplenktā pilsētā, was leant to the museum for the exhibition by the collector A.Hamanis (see V.Tretyakov, 'Ob akademike N.Rerikhe', Dlya Vas, 17 October 1937, no.42; J.Madernieks, 'Nikolaja Rēriha muzejs Rīga', Jaunakas Zinas, 30 October 1937, no.247, p.15; 'Vystavka kartin Rerikha', Universitas, 15 November 1937).
The society was officially registered as the The Society of Friends of the Roerich Museum in Latvia, but was more commonly referred to as The Roerich Society in Latvia. The society's activites were wide-ranging and they maintained an active correspondence with Nikolai and Elena Roerich. After the death of the society's first president, F.Lukin (1875-1934), the presidency was awarded to the famous Latvian poet and philosopher, Richard Rudzitis (1898-1960). The society was dissolved in the autumn of 1940, after the Soviet take-over of Latvia. A further clue as to the provenance of the present lot can be found in a letter of 2 January 1936 from Rudzitis to Elena Roerich:
"Dear Elena Ivanovna, I have already informed Vladimir Anatolevich, that two works by N.K. are up for sale in Riga – 'Saints Boris and Gleb' and 'Stone-Age Men', and I have sent V.A. photos. Some other man turned up today and offered two well-known paintings by N.K. for sale, 'Procopius the Righteous drives away Clouds from Veliky Ustyug' and 'The Stone Age' – a large oil... This same gentleman has also just sold a third painting by N.K. to someone in Riga, 'The Doomed City', for 1500 lats. I enclose photographs... R.Rudzutis"  (Letters from Mountains: The Correspondence of Elena and Nikolai Roerich with Richard Rudzitis, Minsk: Loatats, 2000, vol.I, p.132).

The painting is mentioned again in a letter from Rudzitis to the Roerichs from 12-15 October 1937 in which he describes the opening of the museum and the exhibition:  "The lawyer Hamann has loaned us 'The Doomed City' for one month; Elkan has leant us 'St Procopius drives the clouds..' (idem, p.508).