Monhegan, Maine

Monhegan, Maine, painted in 1922 when Roerich was visiting the United States as part of his American lecture tour, depicts the rocky island off the coast of Maine that had been a haven for American painters since the late nineteenth century, attracting Robert Henri, Rockwell Kent, and many others drawn to its dramatic cliffs, working fishing community, and unmediated Atlantic landscape. Roerich's engagement with this New England subject — so far from his customary Slavic and Himalayan preoccupations — reflects his attempt to demonstrate the universality of his spiritual vision of landscape as a vehicle for transcendence. The rocky coastal landscape of Maine offered the same combination of geological drama and atmospheric grandeur that he found in his Russian and later Himalayan subjects.

Oil on canvas adapting Roerich's established landscape vocabulary to a new geographic environment. The challenge was to render the specific quality of the Maine coastal atmosphere — its grey Atlantic light, granite geology, and maritime atmosphere — within his decorative compositional framework.