| NAPOLEON ORDA
The names of famous artists, musicians, writers and poets, sculptors and architects are shining like clusters of brilliant stars above the European cultural skyline. The personality of Napoleon Orda (1807-1883), the son of Belarus and Poland, artist and musician, composer and publicist, teacher and scientist who awakened profound interest in the past and of whom the descendants are most proud, belongs to the stars of the highest magnitude. Orda was just that very person.
Napoleon Orda authored many piano compositions, twenty concert polonaises, numerous waltzes, polkas, mazurkas, and other instrumental compositions and vocals.
While possessing the excellent abilities of a musician and music teacher, Orda remained for the rest of his life loyal to the theme he once chose, i.e., architectural scene.
Orda did his first series of drawings after his trips to France and the Rhine region in 1840-1842. These were followed by other series in the wake of his journeys (1842-1844) to Spain, Portugal, and Algeria which documented architectural landmarks of Madrid and Lisboa. After 13 trips to the Western European countries, Orda created numerous series of drawings, many of them can still be found in travel guides making these look beautiful.
On his return in 1856 from Paris to his home country, Orda produced his best works of great artistic value and architectural scenes of Belarus, Ukraine, Lithuania, and Poland. The series comprises 144 works of art. Among them, the views of Grodna and Pinsk, Byaroza and Ivanovo, Pruzhany and Ruzhany, manors of Tadeusz Kosciuszko and Adam Mickiewicz, as well as other fascinating historical places. The artist's works depicted the architecture of castles, palaces, temples and chapels, manors of well-known persons, palace-and-park ensembles, and ruins of fortresses so that the future generations could enjoy them. Importantly, two thirds of, the structures that have been depicted in Orda's drawings do not exist any longer, so one can get an idea of them only from his legacy. As if summarizing his creative work after coming back to the native country, Orda noted in 1878 that during his journeys he visited nine gyberniyas (provinces) and drew more than 800 drawings. Orda's legacy comprises more than one thousand watercolors and graphics that depict architectural ensembles and estates of the well-known people from Belarus, Ukraine, Lithuania/, Poland, Algeria, Germany, Portugal, and other European countries. None of the encyclopedic editions on history and culture, architecture, local lore and fine art omits Orda's lithographs, and one cannot imagine the history of European culture without his inheritance.
In February 2007, the 200th anniversary of the great musician, composer,artist, and publicist Orda will be celebrated. The year 2007 will be marked in Belarus and abroad as the year of a great cultural worker of the 19th -century. A museum complex is being established in his home village of
Worocewicze (Ivanausky district of Brest region).
The text is prepared by the Division of Culture of the Ivanava Regional Executive Committee of Brest region
Text from the official flyer “Freestyle” of the National Bank of the Republic of Belarus
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