Nicholas Roerich emerged into the history of world art as a master of mountains. Though in his own time he was ranked as a painter of historical subjects, a scenic designer for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, a scholar, an explorer, a thinker and a public figure, there is no other artist in the world who executed so many canvases with Himalayan views. Roerich’s manner is easily recognizable: his mountains are not an assemblage of bare rocks, but something poetic, made of the glowing vivid substance imbued with the colors of the sunset sky. However, his canvases are dedicated not only to the mountains, but also to the entire world, the time, the destiny of humanity, and a hard and inspiring striving after the Light.
During the first two decades of the 20th century Nicholas Roerich painted the Alps, the Caucasus, the rocky cliffs of Scandinavia and Arizona, and in 1924 he arrived in the Himalayas, and the latter won his heart forever. Mountains, mountains, mountains… The master was inspired by them so much, that with the course of time he began to resemble a giant cliff surrounded by his snow-white brothers. The iridescent colors of universal heights prevailed in the palette of his canvases. It seems that the artist soared above the mountains from one range to another, inspiring people to behold the Infinity.
Painting mountain ranges, Nicholas Roerich never overcharged his works with details, but he tried to reproduce the austerity and purity of mountain outlines. Divine revelations and the music of spheres are heard in them. As a result, the artist’s canvases are not only the objects of aesthetic admiration but also a moral sermon and the Teacher’s wise word originating in the empyreal heights, as we see it in the canvas Drops of Life. Perhaps his fiery speech will direct somebody to faraway horizons, the road to which will be rather arduous. But Roerich’s heroes go firmly towards their aim, and mountain tops turn into the symbols of their spiritual ascent.
Fascinated by the East, the painter absorbed the ideas of Asian peoples who deified the highest peaks and practiced the ancient cult of mountains. He also reflected the ideas of his time in his art, in particular the dreams of the Russian cosmic philosophy about the united world temple equal to the Universe. In each work of Nicholas Roerich one can see this connection to the idea of unification aimed to unite the mankind enlightened by the beauty.