16 Aug 1931 – West East Portraits

In the 25^th story art studio in the Roerich Museum, New York City on the night before he sailed on the Mauretania bound for Paris and India, Svetoslav Roerich put the final touches to the last portrait he had completed during the Spring and Summer.  Svetoslav Roerich work as a portrait painter is known to the hundreds of visitors to the Roerich Museum through an extraordinary and moving piece of realism the portrait of Miss Natacha Rambova, his fiancé.  The artist hosted a private showing of the painting titled “A Young Woman Composer” better known as Natacha Rambova former wife of departed Silent Film Star Rudolph Valentino. Miss Rambova originally from Salt Lake City but lived in the New England area is a brunette with a singularly handsome little head and she has draped herself in an old Japanese robe of silvery grey, the background being some stuff in a Japanese design of the same general tone as the robe.  Miss Rambova makes a more brilliant figure, seated in three quarter length in a rich, pale golden robe with a black border.  She wears a golden turban of the true Indian mode and around her neck is a band of golden ornament that would be barbaric if it were not so sophisticated.  The lovely face gleams amidst all these golden tones with an intelligence and a charm that almost dims these auriferous surfaces.