Nicholas Roerich (1874-1947) Himalayan Peaks with Crimson Clouds, c. 1930's

Snow peaks lit from below by crimson cloud, a violet ridge and the deep folds of a Himalayan valley: this small tempera belongs to the great series of mountain studies Nicholas Roerich painted after settling in the Kullu valley in 1928. Working on cardboard with the fast-drying, matte tempera he preferred, Roerich fixed the changing light of the high ranges in hundreds of such panels, which he regarded as complete works rather than sketches.

The handling is characteristic — the mountain forms built from flat, interlocking planes, the snow left as bare, chalky highlights, the sky an almost abstract band of colour — and so is the monogram in the lower right corner. Roerich’s Himalayan pictures were his personal answer to the questions that occupied him as painter, explorer and thinker: the mountains as a place where the spiritual becomes visible.

The provenance is of note. The work was formerly in the collection of Louis L. Horch, the New York financier who was Roerich’s principal patron and the builder of the Roerich Museum on Riverside Drive; it later passed through a private family collection in New York and a German private collection before reaching the present owner.