Timur Khada 1936

Nicholas Roerich made Timur Khada using what looks like tempera or gouache, with a really interesting approach to mark making. There’s this sense of building up the image in blocks of colour, not quite blended, which gives the landscape a sort of faceted, gem-like quality. The paint is applied in these distinct, almost geometric shapes, which creates a fantastic sense of texture. Look closely, and you can see how Roerich used the brush to build up these layers, almost like carving the mountains out of pigment. There’s a passage in the foreground, where the colours shift from a warm orange to a cool lilac, with these visible brushstrokes that really animate the surface. The physical quality of the paint becomes almost as important as the scene itself. This reminds me a little of some of Marsden Hartley’s landscapes, that same interest in simplified forms and intense colour. It's a conversation across time, a way of seeing and feeling the landscape anew.