Mountain Aragats 1917

Yeghishe Tadevosyan made this painting of Mount Aragats with oil on canvas, and what strikes me is how he’s used soft, blended brushstrokes and a muted palette to create an incredible sense of atmosphere. You can almost feel the cool air coming off those snow-capped peaks in the distance. I imagine Tadevosyan standing en plein air, squinting slightly as he captures the subtle gradations of light on the landscape, and thinking about the cows and the mountains as they merge. There's this thin paint, very diluted, almost like watercolor, that builds up layers of color, suggesting the vastness of the Armenian landscape. The cows are more or less blobs, so the landscape is the real subject, a quiet moment of contemplation. It reminds me of other landscape painters like Corot, who also sought to capture fleeting moments of light and atmosphere in their work. Paintings like this remind us that art is not just about representation, but about feeling, and about how one generation shares and inspires the next.