In Picos de Europa, Asturias there is a lightness to Bomberg's handling of charcoal that stands in contrast to the darkness of the image. This is far removed from the densely worked surfaces that often characterise the early drawings of his students Auerbach and Kossoff, which darken as the paper is reworked. Instead, there is a looseness to Asturias that suggests that it was completely rapidly, in a single go, and that the darkness may have been actual, rather than the result of the choice of medium.

Indeed this was a moment in Bomberg's career when he was painting at night as well as during the day, by moonlight as well as sunlight and recording, too, both the dark moments of a gathering storm and the penetrating shafts of light that marked its ending. Yet, this is not to suggest that the mood of this drawing merely reflects the elements, for there is surely an emotional aspect that anticipates the drawings that Bomberg made in the last years of his life, when he had again settled in Spain. The mountain, like the man, is a brooding presence, inviolate in the face of hostile forces.