Osian's Auction Catalogue The Masterpieces Series | March 2010

30 7 n ichoLAs r oerich (1874 – 1947) National Art Treasure A Shrine besides a lake in the Himalayas Tempera and pastel on canvas, early 1930s Artist monogram in cyrillic, l.r. 23.9 x 29.9 in (60.7 x 76.0 cm) Condition Paint layer consolidated, two mended pin holes visible from verso Provenance Shri Roop Chandji’s Collection. This painting was gifted to the owner by the eminent scholar and collector the late Mulk Raj Anand. “My acquaintance with Mulk Raj Anand was initiated when I was a student with JJ School of Art, Mumbai, in 1956, which turned into a deeper relationship when Mulk Raj Anand came to the Punjab University, Chandigarh, as a holder of the Tagore Chair in 1962, and I had graduated as a teacher with Home Science College, Chandigarh. Our equation further developed – my being a practicing modern artist and ‘him’ as the critic. I should not label myself as a fellow- traveller, but our meetings were more than frequent during his stay in Chandigarh as Professor of Fine Art. I had the privilege of doing Marg publications research trips with him in northern India, especially Punjab, now bifurcated as Himachal and Haryana. His ‘retreat’ Khandala, Maharashtra, near Bombay (now Mumbai) became my home for almost a year, when he was toying with the idea of a Craft Centre including pottery workshop to train locals of Khandala as artisans. I also had the privilege of receiving Kala Award on his behalf from the President of India, in 2004, a few months before his death on Sep. 28 th , 2005.” INR 6,000,000 – 9,000,000 Non–Exportable Item “’Then let us come and see some of the pictures’, Nicholas Roerich said. The master got up and led me into the house. In the hall there were small pictures. All of the Himalayan peaks… And I sat, contemplating the colours of Roerich’s mountains, with their startling white snows, purple sunsets and the glow of dark twilights, all unlike the obvious mountains suggestive of the changing colours, I realized that he was an Expressionist who had viewed the mountains from a body-soul charged with cosmic energy…The old man was seated in an armchair in the drawing room. ‘You must stay the night’, he said. I was happy that he had offered hospitality, as I would not have known where to go even if I walked down from Nagar to Katrain… Certainly, the grace of the Roerich household…the non- violence of Nicholas Roerich, and Mme. Roerich’s talk of spirits, all seemed to cohere together in a new kind of sensibility, which the household had evolved in their abode in the Himalayas… Before I left, he told me of his long trek in the Himalayas with Madame Roerich, and his son George, to Peking on horseback, across Central Asia, Mongolia and Tibet.” – Mulk Raj Anand, ‘Conversation with Nicholas Roerich’, in Splendours of Himachal Heritage, ed. Mulk Raj Anand , Abhinav Publications, New Delhi, 1997, pp. 108-112 The art of Nicholas Roerich stands at the confluence of many international art historical currents between the two World Wars – the invention of ethno- national myth as a response to imperialism, an universalist conception (much like Tagore’s), of spirituality, art and nature as together constituting a language of human brotherhood more nourishing and progressive than an arid modernity. Yet Roerich was far more than an exemplar of a unique historical moment – he was above all, a supremely accomplished artist whose genius was recognized and supported at an early age in both Russia and America, and eventually, worldwide - Nicholas Roerich is a National Art Treasure in both India and Russia. It was with Roerich’s trans- Himalayan expedition, launched from India in 1923 and sweeping across the Himalayas from Sikkim to Tibet, through Central Asia and to Mongolia, that the landscapes of the Himalayas became his primary artistic inspiration and material. Yet the Himalayas were not just a symbol of spiritual purity and mystery for Roerich, or a replacement for Slavic landscapes – the Himalayas’ real, dazzling colours, textures and moods were artistically irreplaceable to him: “Where can one have such joy as when the sun is upon the Himalayas; when the blue is more intense than sapphires; when from the far distance, the glaciers glitter as incomparable gems…A stately larch is all entangled with a blooming rhododendron and everything shades into the blue mists of the rolling distances crowned by a chain of clouds.” – Nicholas Roerich, Shambhala: In Search of the New Era , Inner Traditions/Bear and Company, 1990 [1930], p.41 [Dr. H.] Goetz remarks that Nicholas Roerich was the first Russian representative of that simplified style developed by Manet, Gauguin and van Gogh which led to a new spatial and atmospheric probability by means of an intensive line and colour which in its turn evoked responses never possible in Eastern art. N. Roerich made a deep and intimate study of the rocks and mountains of the inner Himalayas, and his Himalayan landscapes reveal unearthly beauty and grandeur. His colours may appear exaggerated to the people who live in the dusty plains, but those who have had an opportunity of travelling in high altitudes know what brilliant colours can be seen there at dawn and sunset.’ – M. S. Randhawa, ‘The Art of Nicholas Roerich’, LKC 18 , Sep. 1974.