Sunset

By 1938 Nicholas Roerich was living at the foot of the western Himalayas, in the Kullu valley in northern India, where he spent the last two decades of his life. He painted those mountains over and over, and a sunset across the peaks was one of his steady subjects. Years earlier he had given up oil for tempera, which let him lay down the flat, glowing, saturated colour he wanted. The blues, violets and burning orange owe as much to his reading in Theosophy and Eastern religion as to any evening he actually stood and watched. He worked quickly and turned out Himalayan views by the hundred. The estate where he painted them, at Naggar, is a Roerich museum today.