Ilya Muromets 1910

Nicholas Roerich made this painting of Ilya Muromets with what looks like tempera on canvas, and you can just imagine him layering those matte colours, each one luminous, but slightly chalky. I can imagine Roerich wanting to evoke something of the epic scope and heroic quality of Russian folklore - thinking about how to capture a sense of timelessness and grandeur in paint. It’s got that graphic, almost illustrative quality, the kind of image you might find in a storybook, but blown up onto a huge scale. There's something so captivating about the way he balances this kind of naive directness with sophisticated compositional techniques. It makes me think about the work of other painters obsessed with mythic themes and the power of visual storytelling, like Puvis de Chavannes. You can almost feel these artists in dialogue across time, each one drawing from a shared well of inspiration, and pushing painting into new territories.