Devassari Abuntu turns into stone 1906

Nicholas Roerich, working at some point in his life, made this painting using flat colour and crisp lines to depict a woman on the edge of some big black rocks. It’s as though the paint has hardly been pushed around at all, but carefully laid down. You can imagine him, maybe outside, with a small board. Or perhaps this was from memory! I wonder how he built up the courage to make something so pared back. It takes guts to simplify like this - to turn the figure into such a rudimentary gesture. The earth colour looks scratchy and coarse; that may be in the reproduction but I think he courted that effect. What I like most is the way this one figure is caught in the drama of the landscape. The dark rocks almost becoming the same colour as her hair. It's a neat trick, showing the interconnectedness of all things.