“Sketch with trees and people with buggles,” created by Nicholas Roerich in 1919, is an embodiment of the Symbolism art movement. This artwork, falling under the genre of sketch and study, portrays a landscape dominated by the presence of trees and individuals engaging with wind instruments.
The artwork presents a serene yet evocative scene, where multiple barren trees stretch across the horizon, their leafless branches twisting and reaching skyward. Positioned below the trees, a group of people are depicted blowing into what appear to be bugles. This interplay between nature and human activity is rendered with a loose, almost ethereal quality, typical of sketches intended to capture the essence rather than the detail. The use of simple lines and shading imbues the artwork with a sense of depth and adds to the overall symbolic and contemplative atmosphere that is characteristic of Roerich’s style and the Symbolism movement as a whole.
