Mount Fuji 1936

Nicholas Roerich made this painting of Mount Fuji using tempera on cardboard. Just look at that red-to-peach sky and the almost geometric mountains below! I imagine Roerich carefully layering those blues and blacks to create depth. Maybe he mixed a bit of white into the peaks, and you can almost feel the chill of that snowy summit, right? I wonder what Roerich was thinking about while making this. I’m sure he was meditating on the grandeur of nature, and the way light changes the look and feel of the world around us. Like those of us who paint, he wasn't trying to copy nature but to capture the feeling of it, that indescribable “something”. I think this piece really speaks to Roerich's interest in landscape and spirituality. It's a visual poem, a quiet conversation with the mountain, and a reminder that art is always in conversation with other art, reaching across time and space.