Franz Roubaud

Roubaud, this commuter between worlds, who had settled in Munich at the beginning of the 1880s, saw himself as a Russian painter despite his artistic socialisation in Munich, who had found his life's theme in the depiction of the Caucasus. After a stay with his parents in Tbilisi in the 1870s, Roubaud came into contact with Caucasian culture in Munich through the painter Theodor Horschelt, who had spent time in the Caucasus as part of a military expedition from 1858 to 1863 and was subsequently recognised for his depictions of the Caucasus. Alongside Horschelt and his teacher Josef von Brandt, Alfred von Wierusz-Kowalski was also one of the painters whose impressions of the Caucasus had a great influence on Roubaud's work. After his training in Munich, Tsar Alexander III also became aware of Roubaud, who came from Odessa, and between 1882 and 1884 he was able to spend time in the Caucasus, which took him to Tiflis, Erivan, Baku and Tashkent, and even to Samarkand in present-day Uzbekistan. Another extended stay in the Caucasus followed in 1886, when the Tsar commissioned him to decorate the newly built Hall of Fame in Tbilisi with battle paintings. Roubaud subsequently achieved fame in this profession, but he devoted himself with equal enthusiasm to depicting oriental city and market scenes, and above all Caucasian horsemen. A passionate horseman himself, he depicted Caucasians and Cossacks on horseback in every conceivable variation - individually as riders or as a group crossing a ford, as standard-bearers or as riders making music and resting. And last but not least, falconry on horseback - Eckart Lingenauber and Olga Sugrobova-Roth list 15 hunting paintings in their Catalogue Raisonné (cat. nos. 490-505), most of which have falconry as their theme. In contrast to the fast-paced Caucasian Rider, which in its wildness still shows echoes of the painting by Roubaud's teacher Josef von Brandt, this painting, filled with harmonious colours, radiates sublime calm and concentration - three riders in traditional Caucasian costume stand in a field, one of them is only visible from behind, he seems to be riding down to a lake lying below the field. The other two remain on their horses, armed with bows and arrows, while the one at the back carries a falcon (or sparrowhawk?) in his arms. Two accompanying hounds gaze intently at the landscape - perhaps already excitedly searching for the prey that the falcon has brought down. The hunters in their folk costumes encounter a nature that was far removed for an urban audience and had the character of the exotic. It was the time when Tolstoy's autobiographical novel "The Cossacks" had triggered a kind of Caucasian longing throughout Europe. In Germany, it was Karl May who whisked his readers away to the exotic worlds of the Orient and its foothills and, not least, sparked an interest in the remote region. Dr Peter Prange