Maitreya the Conqueror 1926

Nicholas Roerich gave us “Maitreya the Conqueror,” a world of muted color and jagged mountain edges somewhere in Russia. It’s probably oil on canvas but it almost looks like gouache, maybe even tempera, and there is something strangely calming about the color palette despite the subject matter. I really feel for Roerich making this; it's a struggle to make a painting speak. You start with a gesture, a stroke, and then another, and another. But how do you make that first move? You might try to create a horizon, or build a monument out of earth. Perhaps Roerich was thinking about the earth and our place within it? I love the way Roerich composes the clouds, they seem to blend seamlessly with the mountain range. I think about the Romantic painters, like Caspar David Friedrich, and how they captured the sublime power of nature. Roerich's mountains loom large, but they also feel… soft? Perhaps the landscape isn’t so different from our own minds? After all, we too are just fleshy mountains.