Roerich designed the sets and costumes for Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, whose 1913 Paris premiere caused a riot. Before and after the scandal, he painted thousands of Himalayan landscapes suffused with spiritual symbolism, and he drafted an international treaty for the protection of cultural monuments that was signed at the White House in 1935. The range is unusual: theatre, painting, diplomacy and mysticism, all from one career.

He was born in St Petersburg in 1874 and studied law and art simultaneously before choosing art. After the Revolution, he left Russia and eventually settled in the Kullu Valley of India, where he established a research institute. His paintings of Central Asian mountains, produced in enormous quantities, glow with a flat, saturated colour that reflects his interest in theosophy and Eastern spiritual traditions.

The Roerich Pact, his treaty for protecting cultural sites during wartime, was the precursor to the 1954 Hague Convention. He died in Naggar, Himachal Pradesh, in 1947, at seventy-three.