Painting of Kanchenjunga estimated to sell for £800,000 to £1,200,000

What’s more, the painting is estimated to sell for £800,000 to £1,200,000 at auction and is signed to the lower right with Roerich’s monogram.

The brilliant colours in this painting; the crisp pink snow, magenta sky and hazy deep blue dusk gives it a mythical, otherworldly quality.

Nikolai Roerich created highly spiritual and symbolic work. He was captivated by Kanchenjunga mountain and regarded it as the holiest place in the Eastern world. It proved to be a life-long fascination for him because he found a home in the Kuku Valley which overlooked Kanchenjunga and painted pictures of it forty times during his career. This is the only work which captures the entirety of all of the five great peaks though and is considered to be the culmination of the artist’s life’s work on his favourite subject.

Kanchenjunga means ‘The Five Treasures of the Great Snow’. Until 1852 the five-peaked mountain was considered to be the highest point in the world and has long been revered as a sacred place, close to the heavens and believed to be an abode of God.