Mist 1917

Nicholas Roerich painted this landscape, called Mist, with oil on board. It’s hard to say exactly when, but the way he’s laid down the paint, so directly, makes me think he wasn’t laboring over it too much. He has a real feel for the materiality of paint itself. The colors are mixed very subtly, and he applies them in these thin, deliberate strokes, letting the texture of the board come through. See how the sky is almost a uniform field, yet if you look closely you can see the horizontal brushstrokes in it. Roerich is an interesting character, he was something of a mystic, and his work often tries to capture a spiritual essence in nature. This feels very different from the landscapes of the impressionists but maybe Roerich was looking at Whistler’s tonalist works? Anyway, his work asks us to slow down, breathe deep, and find the sublime in the everyday.