Over at the Imaginative Conservative, Benjamin Welton has a great article on a neglected Russian painter whose central theme was the re-imagining and refinement of Russian mythology. Nicholas Roerich’s mission, says Welton, was analogous to what Tolkien aimed for in TLOTR. And it turns out that Roerich also inspired none other than Lovecraft:

The American pulp writer H.P. Lovecraft spoke often of his appreciation for Roerich and once wrote to his friend James F. Morton that “there is something in his [Roerich’s] handling of perspective and atmosphere which to me suggests other dimensions and alien orders of being – or at least, the gateways to such.” Notably, Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness was influenced by Roerich’s renderings of Tibet’s glacial precipices.