Путивль

1906

Exhibitions abroad and the Salon d'Automne

From 1906 Roerich regularly takes part in exhibitions abroad: Paris, Venice, Berlin, Rome, Brussels, Vienna and London get to know his work, and his paintings are bought by the Luxembourg Museum, the National Museum in Rome, the Louvre and other museums. In 1907 he is elected a member of the Société du Salon d'Automne in France.

1906

Director of the Society's Drawing School

On taking up his post as director of the Drawing School, Roerich enlarges its premises, opens new classes and workshops — for icon painting, ceramics, chasing and weaving — restores the rights of the teaching council and founds a Museum of Russian Art at the school; he hopes to reorganise it as a Free People's Academy.

c. 1906

A new period: tempera and the search for colour

From about 1906 realism and symbolism combine in Roerich's art and his search in the field of colour intensifies; he almost gives up oil for tempera and experiments widely with the composition of his paints, laying one colour tone over another.

1909

Elected an academician

In 1909 Roerich is elected an academician of the Imperial Academy of Arts, as well as a member of the Council of the Society for the Protection and Preservation of Monuments of Art and Antiquity in Russia and chairman of the Commission of the Museum of Pre-Petrine Art and Life.

1909–1913

Diaghilev's Russian Seasons: sets and a libretto

In Paris, Borodin's “Polovtsian Dances” from “Prince Igor” and Rimsky-Korsakov's “The Maid of Pskov” are staged in Roerich's designs; for the ballet “The Rite of Spring”, to music by Stravinsky, he creates the costumes and sets and also writes the libretto.

1910

Becomes head of “The World of Art”

From 1910 Roerich heads the artistic association “The World of Art”, whose members include Benois, Bakst, Grabar, Serov, Petrov-Vodkin, Kustodiev, Ostroumova-Lebedeva, Serebriakova and others.