Tristan's castle in Brittany 1912

Nicholas Roerich made this tempera painting of Tristan's castle in Brittany at an unknown date. Look at the blues, purples, and greens. There's something dreamy about how Roerich builds up these colours with what looks like decisive, almost architectural marks. Roerich wasn’t afraid to embrace the physicality of his materials. You can see the texture of the paint, how it's applied in layers, and how the colours blend and interact. It's as if he's building up the image, piece by piece, almost like the stones in the castle itself. Notice the upper right of the piece. The tower almost seems to have a kind of face on it. In its directness, I’m reminded of the bold compositions and flattened perspective of early Renaissance painting. The painting’s power comes from the recognition of the ambiguity of art. Roerich may have been thinking about the legends of Tristan and Isolde when he made this painting, or maybe he was just thinking about rocks.