Nicholas Roerich Collection

The artist himself and his wife Helena Roerich carefully selected the paintings for Latvia from recently created works.

The larger part of the collection was received in 1937.

At the end of 1930, the Latvian Roerich Society’s museum had become an important centre for culture in Riga. Alongside paintings by Nicholas and Svetoslav Roerich there were also works by well-known Latvian, Lithuanian and Estonian masters.

The Latvian Roerich Society was dissolved in 1940.

The further history of the collection is tied to dramatic events – the political situation in Latvia during the war and Stalin’s repressions, which resulted in the collection being deposited to the State Museum of Latvian and Russian Art (now the Latvian National Museum of Art) in 1950.

Perhaps the fact that the artist himself selected the works has given the Riga collection a special uniformity and spirituality.

Collection works –“Mercy”, “On the Heights”, “The Path” – reflect the artist’s perception of the world and the main ideas of the Living Ethics. 

The paintings reveal the master’s characteristic qualities of his India period: clean, saturated colours, a laconic, generalised form, an expressive composition.

The works are painted in tempera. The velvety surface absorbs light and creates a special depth and saturation of the colours.

The Nicholas Roerich Riga collection that was wholeheartedly gifted to Latvia – the land of his ancestors – has become an inalienable part of the state’s cultural heritage.