BELARUS’ HERITAGE: A museum exposition opened in Napoleon Orda’s ancestral home
On 26 November 2021 a museum exposition went on display in the ancestral home of Napoleon Orda, an outstanding artist, composer, scientist and writer of the 19th century. Residents of the village of Vorotsevichi, Ivanovo District, Brest Oblast had been waiting for this moment for a long time: restoration works in the manor kicked off back in 2009, were put on hold in 2019, and finally completed in 2021.
Today, visitors can take a tour of 12 halls and explore more than 110 exhibits put on display in the manor. Among them are unique household items from private collections and works of art teachers of Ivanovo Children’s Art School named after Napoleon Orda. Visitors can immerse themselves in the atmosphere of the 19th century and learn more not only about the outstanding artist, but also about everyday life of the middle-income Belarusian gentry back in the day.
According to historical sources, Vorotsevichi was the possession of the Orda family since the 17th century. Napoleon Orda was born in Krasny Dvor in 1807 to the family of civil servant Mikhail Orda and his wife Jozefina from the Butrymowiczfamily. It is believed that the boy was named in honor of the famous commander and emperor Napoleon Bonaparte who was seen as a liberator by the gentry at that time.
After graduating from Svisloch Gymnasium, the talented young man enrolled in the University of Vilna. Later he took an active part in the uprising of 1830-1831. After its suppression, Napoleon Orda, fearing reprisals, went abroad under a false name. He traveled extensively across Europe, lived in Austria, Switzerland, Italy, and in September 1833 received the status of an emigrant in France. During the Parisian period Napoleon Orda earned recognition of European intellectuals. There he began to draw: he made his first cycles of drawings after his travels across France and Rhineland in 1840-1842.
Napoleon Orda was able to return to his family estate only after 25 years of emigration. But he had to rent his family estate. After a while the authorities completely banned him from Vorotsevichi. The artist had to move to his relatives. Orda reunited with his ancestral home only after his death in Warsaw, when, according to his will, his body was transported and buried in the family crypt in Yanovo (now Ivanovo).
The artistic heritage of this truly talented person features over 1,150 watercolor and graphic works, and more than 20 music pieces!In emigration, Napoleon Orda became fascinated by architectural landscape, and, while traveling in the 1840s-1880s, he made sketches, capturing the sights of Belarus, Ukraine, Lithuania, Poland, France, Germany, Spain, and Portugal. His polonaises were performed on European stages, and his friends included Adam Mickiewicz, Frederic Chopin, Franz Liszt, Stendhal, and many more.
Today, thanks to Napoleon Orda’s sketches, Belarusian architects have the possibility to reconstruct the original appearance of memorial sites, palaces, the gentry homesteads. They also used Napoleon Orda’s sketches to restore his family house, which was burned down during the war. Another document used in the restoration work was an inventory of the estate of 1835, which provided a detailed picture of the house, the number of rooms, including which side the doors opened. It is now possible to visit the study, workshop, guest room, dining room, coffee room, reception hall, and rooms of Napoleon Orda’s mother Jozefina Butrymowicz and his niece Helena Skirmunt.
