Boat “Nicholas Roerich”

"It was autumn, and I wanted to finish the boat before winter. I had built it for Ada, although we always used it together. She was usually at the oars, while I sat in the stern.

In winter, the sea freezes all the way to the horizon. Before the ice comes, the local people pull their boats ashore and turn them upside down along the coastline. I decided to paint our boat because it was the first one we ever had.

This is the shore of a sea inlet. Beyond it lies a long sandbar, and then the open Barents Sea, where the winds are always strong. But on that day the weather was calm and sunny.

Ada loved hunting, so we often went out to sea. She was an excellent shot with a small-bore rifle and sometimes managed to bring down more than one seal. We laid our catch in the bottom of the boat, and if there was too much to fit, we towed the rest behind us. We never returned from a hunt empty-handed.

When the time came to leave for home, we gave the boat to our neighbour, a Pomor hunter."
— Volodymyr Melnychenko

Study
Tempera on wallpaper
1958