Overseas away Roerich N.K. (Part 1)

A description of Nikolai Roerich’s painting "Overseas Guests

Nikolai Roerich painted this painting in 1901. The painting was inspired by a sea voyage the artist had taken two years earlier to Novgorod. During the trip, the weather was surprisingly good, and the artist thought for a moment that once upon a time, our ancestors, the Russians, sailed the same way.

The project of the painting was in his mind for a long time and it was only in 1901 that he presented it to the public. This painting pleased the Emperor Nicholas II so much that the emperor expressed his desire to buy this canvas.

As the main material, the artist used paints for folk art. Using them, Nicholas Roerich painted a rook, a river and a red sail, symbolizing affiliation with the Russians. At that time a new movement - modernism - was just beginning to spread, and the artist skillfully combined the better traditions of modernism and the aesthetics of the past.

Roerich was able to achieve maximum simplicity of the image, thereby conveying the depth of his idea - to show his contemporaries in what conditions our ancestors sailed on the rivers and what ships they used for this purpose. The artist demonstrated a subtle combination of all the details in the picture "Overseas Guests", not missing even the most inconspicuous elements - cloak clasps. Historians have noted that the picture refers to the period of prosperity of Kievan Rus, when not only Russians, but also Normans and Polovtsians sailed along the route "from the Varangians to the Greeks". In the painting it is noticeable that Russians used the drakars of northern peoples (they can be easily distinguished by their front part with a stylized mythical dragon).

Thus, the plot of the picture refers to the X-XI century. It depicts two ships sailing in good weather towards Novgorod. The picture is drawn in a very simple style and gives the impression that the time in that era was quiet and beautiful, like the weather on a dark blue river.