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This imposing canvas, one of three versions of the subject, was the result of Lear's visit to India and Ceylon in 1873-75, the last and longest expedition of his career as a travel artist. He went, with some reluctance, at the invitation and expense of his patron Lord Northbrook, the Liberal statesman who had been appointed Indian Viceroy. On his arrival in November 1873 he was immediately enraptured and for the next fifteen months traveled all over the subcontinent, making rough sketches and notes to be used as the basis for more finished work on his return home. He reached Darjeeling, on the southern edge of the Himalayan Mountains, in January 1874, stayed for several days at Doyle's Hotel, and studied the spectacular views of Kangchenjunga-one of the highest peaks-along the well-known scenic route of the Birch Hill Road. After a couple of days he felt overwhelmed, wondering if he could ever make what he saw work as the subject of a painting. "Kinchinjunga is not, as it seems to me, - a sympathetic mountain"; he wrote in his journal for January 18, it is so far off - so very God like & stupendous, - & all that great world of dark opal vallies full of misty, hardly to be imagined forms, - besides the all but impossibility of expressing the whole as a scene, - make up a rather distracting and repelling whole.1 By the end of the following day, however, he was more hopeful: he had made a number of drawings and "jottings" and determined that the mountain looked its best in the early morning. In his journal he noted that the "light and shade" is too broken at sunset, & the absence of the beautiful broad morning effect is not atoned for by the finerr color of later hours. Kinchinjunga at sunrise is a glory not to be forgotten: Kinchinjunga PM is apt to become a wonderful hash of Turneresque color & mist & space, but with little claim to forming a picture of grand effect.2 As further aides-mémoires he bought a number of scenic photographs at the hotel before leaving. Lear returned from India to his home in San Remo on the Italian Riviera early in 1875. Before the trip he had been commissioned to paint an Indian landscape by another of his patrons, Henry Austin Bruce, at the time Home Secretary. It was for Bruce, who in the meantime had been created Baron Aberdare, that he painted the first version of Kangchenjunga, between 1875 and 1877; it now belongs to Cynon Valley Borough Council.3 The second, which he despatched from San Remo at the same time as the first, was commissioned by Louisa, Lady Ashburton and is now in a private collection. The present work, dated 1879, is the third and final version, painted for the man who had encouraged Lear to visit India in the first place, Lord Northbrook.
A member of the Baring family, which had been prominent in the worlds of finance and politics for generations, Northbrook commanded a large fortune. He also had longstanding family connections with India. He enjoyed a successful term as Viceroy and, in recognition of his good work, was almost immediately elevated from baron to earl. In 1879 his friend Lear desperately needed money for a new house at San Remo, and Northbrook gave him an interest-free loan of £2,000. It seems likely that the painting of the present work was related in some way to this: perhaps Northbrook commissioned it as a further means of helping Lear; perhaps Lear presented it to his patron in gratitude.
As he intended after his encounters with the actual place, Lear sets his scene in the morning. He shuns the "Turneresque" mistiness of afternoon in favor of a clear, fresh light that affords definition to every massive ridge and peak. The awe-inspiring "grand effect" that was his highest aim as an artist is achieved in two directions: the mountains piling up to fantastic heights above, and the V-shaped avenue of trees plunging as though into an abyss below. In the left foreground some tea-pickers in local dress gather near a Buddhist shrine, included perhaps to point up the aspiring, spiritual feeling associated with great mountains.

Malcolm Warner

Julia Marciari-Alexander, This other Eden, paintings from the Yale Center for British Art , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 1998, p. 166, no. 68, ND1314.3 Y36 1998 (YCBA)