Nicholas Roerich

Collection of Louis and Nettie Horch, New York (acquired directly from the artist)
Thence by descent
Private Collection, Massachusetts

New York, Kingor Galleries, The Nicholas Roerich Exhibition, December 1920-January 1921 (traveling exhibition, visiting the following locations among others)
Boston, Boston Art Club, February 1921
Buffalo, Albright Art Gallery, March 1921
Chicago, Art Institute, April-May 1921
St. Louis, City Art Museum, July 1921
San Francisco, Museum of Art, September-October 1921
Cleveland, Cleveland Museum of Art, 1922
New York, Nicholas Roerich Museum (permanent collection), 1923-1935
Amherst, Massachusetts, Mead Art Museum, Theater as Spectacle: Early Twentieth-Century Russian Set and Costume Design, September-November 1994

C. Brinton, The Nicholas Roerich Exhibition, New York, 1921, no. 128
F. Grant et al. Roerich, Himalaya, A Monograph, New York, 1926,
p. 198
Roerich Museum Catalogue, New York, 1930, no. 128
A.V. Yaramenko, Nikolai Konstantinovich Roerich, his life and creations during the past forty years, New York, 1931, p. 36
Mead Art Museum, Theater as Spectacle: Early Twentieth-Century Russian Set and Costume Design, Amherst, Massachusetts, 1994, back cover (incorrectly titled)
E. Yakovleva, Teatralno-Dekoratsionoe Iskusstvo N. K. Rerikha, Samara, 1996, p. 230, no. 351, illustrated

This painting seems to be still stretched on its original stretcher. It is framed behind glass yet there do not appear to be any losses or damages, except possibly a few very small chips on the right edge and perhaps a spot or two in the sail of boat in the center. There are numerous pentimenti and areas where the composition is slightly confusing, all of which is intentional. These pentimenti are not anything that have emerged since the picture was painted. The condition is beautiful. The following condition report has been provided by Simon Parkes of Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc. 502 East 74th St. New York, NY 212-734-3920, simonparkes@msn.com , an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's.
"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."

In the north of Holy Russia lies the mighty and glorious town of Novgorod, known to all as Lord Novgorod the Great. And once there lived in great Novgorod a bard, a musician of some repute, named Sadko.

In 1919 Roerich traveled to London where he was commissioned to make set designs for Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's medieval epic Sadko at the Royal Opera House. The Novgorod Market from Sadko, 1920, is one of a few extremely rare designs for this unrealized production; it is a prime example of Roerich's work for the opera and theater, vibrantly executed in his trademark painterly style. The composition is framed by a proscenium, and when turned vertically it reveals forms otherwise concealed in the panorama including trumpeters, a lion and a hilltop adorned with iconic onion domes. Such imagery underscores the artist's early interest in Symbolist painting, and it prefigures the forms, often spiritual, he would later embed in his landscapes.

Roerich discussed at great length the care and premeditation he put into his stage designs:

I never paint the scenery for an opera or a ballet without first having an intimate acquaintance with both the drama and the music. I study both deeply, in order to get at the spirit that lies behind both, which spirit must be one and the same if the work is to be great and lasting. Having steeped myself in the central idea, the inspiration that gave birth to the work, and permitted it to take possession of me, I then endeavour to express the same thought, the same inspiration in my painting, that the composer and the librettist have expressed in music and in words (as quoted in C. Brinton, Nicholas Roerich Exhibition, p. 21).