ARCTIC COLOR
THE ADVENTUROUS EXPEDITIONS OF ALEXANDER BORISSOFF, THE PAINTER OF THE FAR NORTH
BY
STERLING HEILIG
ILLUSTRATIONS FROM PAINTINGS BY ALEXANDER BORISSOFF
“MIDNIGHT IN THE KARA SEA”
IN THE POSSESSION OF THE FRENCH GOVERNMENT
About twenty-five years ago, the Grand Duke Vladimir of Russia, making a journey into the northern part of the Empire, chanced to visit the lonely Solovetski Monastery on the shores of the White Sea. Among the sacred painters of this monastery he found a young peasant who had been sent there by his parents as a boy of fifteen. Duke Vladimir, struck with his talent, shipped him off to St. Petersburg to study in the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts. The young Russian peasant was Alexander Borissoff, the adventurous painter whose work in the last few years has made the wonderful color scheme of the Arctic Circle for the first time accessible to the eyes of the world.
His early years on the edge of the Arctic fired the imagination of the youth, and directed the course of his whole future life. While he was still a student he made a trip to England. “There,” he says, “an idea that had long been shaping itself in my brain took hold of me. The polar regions fascinated me. My forefathers, I knew, hunted bears at Spitzbergen; and as a boy I had heard all about the Arctic. I wanted to see and paint that wonderful country. Travelers would write that the Arctic nights were magnificent; but I wanted to give the colors and lights themselves.”
Borissoff Becomes a Samoyed
Borissoff shipped on a Russian boat from Newcastle for the Murman Coast—Russian territory adjoining Norway—and from there sailed to Nova Zembla. On the frozen island of the Arctic Sea, living among the wandering Samoyed tribes, he began to paint under such conditions as certainly no artist has ever painted before. It was the make-shift expedition of a buoyantly adventurous and rough-bred young artist, better furnished with canvases and brushes than with clothing, instruments, and stores. He practically became a Samoyed; he adapted himself to the tribal laws with good-natured tact, helping out the native commissariat by shooting white partridges, wild geese, and Arctic bear. He studied reindeer breeding; he took native baths in steam-tents and ice-water; 412 he attended weddings, funerals, and pagan rites. Wherever the tribe traveled, he followed; and everywhere he painted.
The movements of the Samoyed depend largely on the habits of the reindeer. “In autumn the reindeer seeks the wooded zone,” says Borissoff. “He cannot stand the tremendous snowstorms that whirl in the tundra; and he must live on lichen from the trunks and boughs of fir-trees, or feed on the shoots of birch and willows, when the frozen soil prevents him from browsing moss under the snow. But no sooner does he sniff the polar spring, than he longs irresistibly to gallop to the north to the open air of the Arctic, where there are no tiresome gnats, no intolerable wasps to lay their larvæ in his skin and cause him torment.”
The Samoyed keeps in this migrating animal’s wake; and it was in one of these migrations north that Borissoff first saw what he calls the Realms of Death.
Painting in a Temperature of 30° Below Zero
“The curious thing was that I found all as I had imagined it,” he says. “The knowledge of the icebergs and the snow seemed to have been born in me. Vast stretches of glaciers with their yawning chasms of death, icebergs mountain-high—I greeted them as old friends. Living on native rations and enduring the most bitter cold, I made landscapes—or rather, icescapes—in the open, with a temperature of 30 degrees below zero.
“Sometimes it was impossible to paint. Even the turpentine froze. The paint congealed in lumps, whilst the hairs of the brushes snapped off like brittle glass. I had to put on fur gloves to hold a brush, and work with swift, energetic strokes—as the rough appearance of some of my paintings bears evidence.”
All of Borissoff’s paintings were done in the ice zone beyond the 70th parallel of north latitude, in the district between Archangel and the Yalmal Peninsula. He never tires of telling of the peculiar color-tones of this region, and the curious psychological effects of its distance, silence, and isolation. Living amid its singular light phenomena, where the spring-time snow turns pink against blue icebergs, and the boggy midsummer tundra swims in a sea of orange-red against a sky of aquamarine, even the Samoyed becomes a color worshiper.
“Why does that man sit in a scarlet cloak on rose-colored snow against a solid background of dark blue?” I asked, examining one of Borissoff’s paintings.
“The deep blue is an iceberg,” he laughed. “Yes, and the snow is really that color—by reflection. The man is a Samoyed who bartered everything he owned—reindeer, walrus, ivory, dogs, and sledges—to an adventurous dealer from the nearest settlements for a robe of scarlet woolen stuff. Then, in his scarlet cloak, he wandered about in the sunlight for ten days, in an ecstatic trance, silent, good-for-nothing, living on his family, drunk with the glory of that scarlet garment!”
Traveling With a Woman Scout
The man was Danillo, the brother-in-law of Ireena, a woman scout of whom Borissoff speaks frequently in his reminiscences, and whose wonderful gift of “seeing” by atmospheric signs the country beyond the horizon and divining where the trails lay gave her a position of peculiar dignity among her tribesfolk. This woman was their sole and undisputed guide through the monotonous flat wastes of snow. Among the last of the pagans of Europe woman’s place is certainly higher than it is supposed to have been before the dawn of Christianity. A woman like Ireena may hold the tribal-family together; revive courage in dire surroundings; decide momentous debates as to reindeer-speculation; practise medicine and surgery; withstand the redoubtable devils of blizzard and thaw; serve the bad Siadey in his bloody sanctuary; and even dare the unmentionable good god’s isolating stretches of white cold, to serve an inquisitive painter from the South.
It was Ireena and Danillo who took Borissoff to the last pagan shrines of Europe, never visited before by a European.
“In the background,” says Borissoff, “one sees mountains of floating icebergs of tremendous dimensions, prevented from approaching the coast by submarine reefs. Here, on the edge of the Arctic, are the cliffs containing the Holy Place, reached only after a terrible journey over icy rocks and fearful ravines, through riverbeds stuffed with snow, up snowy slopes in intricate zig-zags, where the reindeer floundered and protested.”
Borissoff’s Pilgrimage to the Last Pagan Shrines of Europe
“THE COUNTRY OF THE DEAD”—A STUDY OF THE KARA SEA IN AUGUST
Three versts’ distance from the shrine, they stopped on the threshold of the Samoyed Mecca. Borissoff stumbled over huge mounds of idols heaped between cliffs, one of them so great that forty sledges could not have removed the idols. He passed mountains of deer-skulls, antlers, and skulls of polar bears; and heaps of rusty axes, knives, chains, fragments of anchors, harpoons, and parts of rifles brought as offerings over weary leagues. The Samoyeds often drive 414 here from a thousand miles away, stop at the threshold of this dwelling-place of the supreme Idol-God of the polar regions, and, killing a domestic deer as the least sacrifice, besprinkle the shrine with its blood.
“SAMOYED LOVE OF COLOR”
IN THE POSSESSION OF THE QUEEN OF ENGLAND
“People who naïvely believe that the Samoyeds are no longer heathen are greatly mistaken,” says Borissoff. “Notwithstanding their being nominally Christians, they still worship their Hyes and Siadeys no less fervently than in old times. Recent bloodstains on the idols testified to recent visits; but it was only when we were about to take our departure that I learned that this was not the chief shrine at all!”
Borissoff insisting, Ireena reluctantly guided him to it, three or four versts down the coast, to the east.
“Now we passed far greater mounds of axes, knives, and other valuable offerings,” he says. “The idols stood like an army around two enormous elevated, round clay altars at the very top of the mountain, cut off by a deep chasm bridged by a stone archway; but the number of bones was less than I had expected to find.”
Ireena explained.
“This is the dwelling-place of Hye, the god, not that of Siadey, the devil,” she said. “Hye wants for sacrifice the head of a human being or of a white bear, or at least of a wild deer. Now that white bears are harder to kill and wild deer are scarcer, it’s no good for people to come here—unless in great stress. But Siadey takes anything, even domestic deer!”
“In great stress” had a grim significance. One of the skulls was obviously that of a man of Aryan race.
Further on they came on one of the sledges habitually used by the Samoyeds for the conveyance of their gods. Opening its box, Borissoff found two human-shaped idols, one of wood and the other of stone, and the images of a bear and a wolf in wood. These must have been brought out of the tundra by some sorceress, to keep real bears and wolves from some locality. As long as these objects remained at Hye’s shrine, there would be no danger to the pious offerer’s herds. Near by lay another curiosity. It was a piece of boulder wrapped up in red cloth. It was “sickness,” removed from the tundra, beyond the sea, so as never to return to the dwellers of the Tchoom!
Borissoff lived with the Samoyeds until he had painted up all his canvases. Returning to civilization, he was immediately welcomed by enthusiastic amateurs. The sale of seventy-five pictures en bloc to M. Tretiakoff, of Moscow, put him on his feet financially. Count Witte took an interest in his work. The Grand Duke Vladimir remembered that he had been the first to appreciate the painter’s possibilities; and the Tsar told him to go ahead with another expedition, offering to defray most of the expenses.
An Ill-Fated Expedition
So, with the zoölogist Timofeieff, and the chemist Filipoff, he soon started on a veritable white man’s expedition, with a smart cutter, the “Metchka,” a portable dwelling-house, kerosene stoves, scientific instruments, photographic apparatus, guns, ammunition, books, clothing, trading-stores, and food delicacies in abundance. Yet, by a strange irony of fate, the well-stocked 415 little expedition was destined to suffer perils and privations such as Borissoff had never dreamed of among his Samoyeds.
They set up their portable dwelling-house on the edge of the Nova Zembla tundra off the Strait of Matochkin Shar, transporting its parts and furnishings by dog-sledge. By the time this was accomplished, the “Metchka” had arrived in the Strait; and they started on a voyage into the Kara Sea. Their object was to distribute materials and provisions along the extreme northeastern coast of Nova Zembla during the fall, and to return to their house to spend the winter. In the spring they hoped to make an early start in sledges along the route of their supplies.
The Abandonment of the Ship
“It was in navigating the Sea of Kara that we encountered our first acute peril,” says Borissoff. “The further north we got, the more numerous were icebergs. Often our small ship was wedged in tight between walls of ice that threatened to crush us.
“We decided to turn back; but it was too late. Winter was closing in earlier than we had anticipated; and the broken ice about us was becoming a solid field. After two weeks’ battle, we had to surrender. Nature had captured us. We were being carried off into regions of certain death. Our only escape lay in abandoning our ship, and attempting to regain the coast by journeying across the dreadful sea of ice on foot. Gathering what provisions we could carry, our party of nine, including the five sailors, set out with but little expectation of ever reaching land.”
Everything was put into three canoes, to be pulled along the edges of ice-banks by nine men and some twenty dogs. Soon the free water froze tight; and they had to drag the boats over the ice. The wind made this too difficult. The canoes were abandoned; and the most necessary supplies were placed on sledges made of skis. With the snow up to their waists, they plodded on—until they discovered that they were on a drifting island of ice!
Drifting Out to Sea on Floes of Ice
“We noticed that the ice a little way in front of us was flying at a terrible speed toward the north, while we seemed to be standing still; but this was merely an optical illusion—the ice in front of us was standing still, for it was shore-ice, while we were being carried at a giddy pace out to sea!
“Our only salvation was to reach the stationary shore-ice. The edge of the moving floe was grinding it into a devilish porridge. Immense blocks, weighing tens of thousands of tons, were whirled round, leaped out of the sea, climbed on each other, rearing on high, groaning and roaring, and plunging and vanishing!”
PAINTING OF A SLEDGE SET UPON END FOR THE NIGHT, WITH SKINS AND MEAT HUNG UPON IT SO AS TO BE OUT OF REACH OF THE DOGS
They made the crossing and dragged on inland for three days. A gentle breeze was blowing. Borissoff heard a suspicious plash of water.
“It was horrible to believe our ears. We climbed a hummock; and there our eyes assured us that another channel of water really separated us from firm land! The floe began breaking up. The solid ground failed beneath us. Our feet were sucked into yielding quicksands of snow and splintered ice. We threw ourselves flat to distribute our weight and clutched the larger lumps. We lost our kerosene stove, the tray for lighting fires on, some of our cartridges, and most of our instruments. The sleeping-bags, fur coats, and other remnants of our supplies we managed to save.”
The despairing howls of their lost dogs cut them to the heart. The men lost courage. Borissoff and the two scientific men had to threaten the others with revolvers; and a tragedy on the ice was imminent, when they found themselves being carried into an extensive bay surrounded by lofty cliffs. On an iceberg they discovered brackish water. Later it gave them unbearable thirst, until the men cried: “Oh, God, for one small cup of warm water, to die in peace!”
Making a Fire with Seal Fat
Borissoff killed a seal and implored them to be patient while he made a fire with its oily fat to melt snow for drinking—a trick he had learned among the Samoyeds. Ravenously eating the liver, lights, kidneys, and brains raw, they began cutting the necessary pieces of fat. Borissoff would take a tiny log of firewood, cut it small, pour kerosene over it, rub it with fat, and light it. This had to be done in a tea-tin. They put fat on the fire. It burned splendidly. One small stick warmed the kettle; and the famished men were soon drinking lukewarm cocoa. During their further wanderings from floe to floe, they carried with them the embers of wood and treasured every little piece of rag and paper “to keep the lamp of our life burning as long as we should have seal fat. The wood embers seemed capable of burning for ever, provided there was enough fat!”
They grew attached to particular floes on which they had built shelters. But the sleeping-bags were becoming unendurable, the fur rubbed off, the leather wet and clammy, like the skin of a putrefying carcass. They had almost got to lying in the sleeping-bags by day, when a Samoyed declared he smelt the smoke of a native encampment. A sailor thought he heard the barking of dogs; but they paid no attention, for the howls of their own poor beasts, wandering aimlessly on the floes, often came to them. After drinking tea, they rose up and prepared to make some effort.
The Party Rescued by Samoyeds
It grew lighter. There was something moving on the shore. It could not be merely birds! They let off a gun. Two shots answered. Lines of tiny black dots advanced toward them. They were Samoyed dog-sledges. “And fancy what a stroke of luck!” says Borissoff; “they were old friends of mine, with whom I had lived on my first sojourn in the tundra!”
A STUDY MADE IN NOVA ZEMBLA AT THE TIME OF THE COMPLETE ECLIPSE OF THE SUN, JULY 27, 1896
Brought finally to shore by the natives, they rejoiced childishly at its contact. Here was solid land! Here were real stones! “Strange phenomenon,” says Borissoff, “an hour before, we had scarcely been able to lift our weary feet. Now we wanted to leap, dance, laugh, cry, pray, and run about aimlessly! Timofeieff and I took two rifles and went along the shore northward. We ploughed through the snow, why and whither we did not know. We could not sit still. Then, when we returned to the snug tents, we ate boiled reindeer meat, drank hot tea, and lay down to sleep twenty-seven hours without once waking!” The land journey back to their portable house was accomplished in dog-sledges.
PAINTING OF A CHURCH BUILT BY M. SEBERJAKOW
The three months’ night was passed amid comfortable surroundings. They shot the white bear. They read, dreamed, told stories, and played cards interminably. They received continual visits from delighted natives, come on perilous pilgrimages to the magic European house, with its lavish food novelties, its devil-boxes that talked, sang, and played music.
When the three months’ day came again, they made a great sledge expedition north to the Straits of Tchekin, called The Unknown and the Bear Straits. Borissoff, as usual, made quantities of paintings. He named one enormous glacier after Count Witte.
“One morning I went out to paint it, shining like silver in the sunlight. I had scarcely finished making the rough sketch,” he tells, “when a noise of shuffling and deep breathing attracted my attention. Glancing round, I saw to my horror the shaggy white body of a great polar bear within ten feet of my back. He had been watching me paint. Now, taking my fright for hostility, he lost interest in art and advanced toward me, with a paw uplifted. Springing back, I snatched my rifle, crying: ‘Oshkai! Oshkai!’ hoping that my companions might hear. Dropping on one knee, I fired; but the bullet only caused the great bear to roar and dash toward me. I fired again. The shot was more effective. It slowed his progress. Then three shots rang from behind an icy boulder; for my companions had heard and come to my rescue, and I was saved.”
Good luck, however, could not stay with the expedition. First, their best dogs went mad, not from hydrophobia, but from the strange craze of the ice, which affects men and dogs alike. Then food failed. The remaining dogs starved, though they killed their few reindeer to feed both themselves and the dogs. When nothing remained to kill, they were glad to eat the refuse of their previous camps. Amid hair-breadth escapes, suffering from starvation and exhaustion, they wandered back on foot to their portable house, where the arrival of the Russian military transport-ship, the “Pakhtoosoff,” ended their courageous preparations for a second wintering. Leaving the house and its stores to their faithful Samoyeds and carefully packing 418 Borissoff’s three hundred paintings, they steamed back to civilization.
Borissoff’s Revelation of Arctic Color
When Borissoff arrived at St. Petersburg, the Tsar sent for him. His impression of the Emperor was of “a quiet gentleman who takes a keen delight in art.” The Empress, herself a painter of portraits, was immensely interested; and the first exhibition of the paintings took place in the White Salon of the Winter Palace. Other exhibitions followed in other capitals of Europe. In Berlin, the exhibit was patronized by the German Empress; in Munich, by the Prince Regent. In Paris the French Government bought “In the Kara Sea”; while in London the court set pointed the way to all good Englishmen to their exhibition at the Grafton Galleries.
The extraordinary thing about the paintings is, of course, their revelation of the colors of the frozen world of the polar circle. In a region which our ignorant imagination shrouds in dull sepia tones, Borissoff reveals lights that we never dreamed to be on land or sea. There is an effect of strange, mysterious brilliancy in one of his largest canvases, entitled “In the Kingdom of Death.” Dark icebergs tower above the open sea; while through heavy purple-black clouds, melting to blue and mauve, break lines of lurid red light from the August sunrise, that throw an orange-red glow along steely, blue-black waters.
“Midnight in the Kara Sea”—selected by the French Government’s experts as Borissoff’s most extraordinary production—shows a sky of glowing orange, and floes of ice drifting on black waters. An unearthly yellow-green light illumines the deep blue shadows of “A Polar Winter Night.” Two polar bears stand in a great expanse of snow; the moon’s rays fall across rocks and project their outline in black shade. The snow is wonderfully rendered—thick, soft, and glistening, after a recent fall.
“Looking for the Reindeer—Evening” shows a snowy landscape with a firmament of yellow. In “The Cold Became More Severe” gray plains are seen beneath a sky of clear apricot. “A Halting Place” has a dark blue-gray sky, brown-gray ice, a belt of snow, and a range of hills with patches of brown rock showing beneath the snow. Two polar bears lying dead on the ice in front are admirably done; and the whole picture is full of stern romance. The romantic quality of Borissoff’s best pictures comes, in part, from the fact that he makes us understand that people live in these awful places—or have lived!
Such is the suggestion of “The Last Survivor.” It shows a desolate shore where, after an exceptionally severe winter, a band of poor hunters had perished. Reverently the survivors had interred their dying comrades—until the last man died! A solitary white fox surrounded by a few bleaching bones is the central feature of the haunting picture.
“IN THE MIDNIGHT SUNSHINE”
For the most part, the pictures are small canvases, depicting glaciers, icebergs, snowdrifts, coast scenes, and the tundra in its ever-varying color-aspects, winter and midsummer, spring and autumn, with its Samoyeds, their tents, boats, sledges, reindeer, dogs, and foxes. Every imaginable atmospheric effect is given, from the wonderful glow of the midnight sun, to raw, hanging fog that can be well-nigh felt. Of the splendid richness of these effects and, quite as much, their baffling gradations, the painter never tires of telling. “One beauty of this strange nature,” he says, “is the extraordinarily soft variety of tones, that can only be compared to the reflections of precious stones. And God preserve the artist from trying to follow conventional ideas as to tones and effects that may have happened to strike him as universal in the past! Offended nature will elude him. It is only by divesting oneself of prejudice that one can render these wonderful harmonies.”