Douglas painted this mountain village on several occasions in the mid-late 1950s, in watercolour, pen and ink and oil.

The location is almost certainly the high alpine town of St Moritz, in the Engadine region of Switzerland, which has a protestant church (Kirche St Moritz) with a high tower topped with a blue-ish spire reminiscent of the church in the painting. One of the best-known ski resorts in Switzerland, St Moritz was the preferred snow escape from Paris for Douglas and his French fiancée Jacqueline, both dedicated skiers.

In March 1957, Douglas wrote to his old friend, New Zealand composer Douglas Lilburn: "I've been up a mountain since I wrote last and have even had some skiing, which was like working for liberation of some sublime order - and, if that were not enough, automatically the blood gets a healthier consistency. A week or two of such exercise and breathing gave me time to reflect - got more reading done too than in months of ordinary living."

Tragically, their alpine getaway was to be the place Douglas lost Jacqueline: She died unexpectedly in a St Moritz clinic early in 1961 after a skiing accident. During her months of recovery with her shattered leg in traction, she insisted Douglas go back to New Zealand for the first time in 12 years to see his parents and be present for his solo art exhibition at the Architecture Centre Gallery in Wellington. She had just graduated to crutches when an embolism from her knee went to her brain. He was devastated that she had died alone and returned broken-hearted to France to start all over again.

Anna Cahill