Three Jewels 1932

Nicholas Roerich made ‘Three Jewels’ with tempera on canvas. Look at the way Roerich builds up these monumental mountains with flat planes of colour. It’s like he’s making a collage, piecing together different shapes to create this huge, imposing landscape. There’s a real sense of process here, you can almost see him figuring it out as he goes along. The surface is quite matte, very little gloss. It gives the whole painting a kind of earthy, grounded feeling. And the colors! These muted, earthy reds and purples feel so elemental, like they’re coming straight from the earth. Notice the figure in the cave too, painted with such delicate precision against the broad landscape. The mountains are rendered in simple planes of flat colour, but this makes them even more imposing and monumental. You can feel the weight and the scale of the landscape. Roerich reminds me a little of Marsden Hartley, both artists are drawn to these stark, spiritual landscapes, but Roerich has his own unique way of seeing the world. In art, we can find new ways of seeing, thinking, and experiencing the world.