In 1918, the artist created the Eques Aeternus, or “The Eternal Riders” suite. A Karelian Ladoga Lake view with flying clouds, changing every day their appearance, that is recognizable in many artist’s work, inspired him to create a series of paintings. Later, in 1939, Roerich remembered: “From the earliest years, the heavenly architecture gave me one of the greatest joys. Among the first childhood memories, first of all there are beautiful patterned clouds. Eternal movement, generous transformations, powerful creativity tied my eyes to the sky for a long time. Wonderful animals, warriors fighting with dragons, white horses with wavy manes, boats with colored gilded sails, alluring ghostly mountains – I could see everything in these infinitely rich, inexhaustible heavenly images. (…)

The mounds became especially majestic when they were drawn against the background of this abundance of clouds. In the picture “The See Battle”, the entire sky was originally occupied by flying Valkyries, but later I wanted to remove them, building copper-sounding clouds, – let them fight invisibly. The paintings “The Heavenly Battle”, “The Vision”, “The Will of the Sky”, “Waiting. Karelia” and many others are built exclusively on cloud formations.”

(N.K. Roerich. The Heavenly Architecture.)