Nicholas Konstantinovich Roerich was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, on October 9, 1874, the first-born son of lawyer and notary, Konstantin Roerich and his wife Maria. He was raised in the comfortable environment of an upper middle-class Russian family with its advantages of contact with the writers, artists, and scientists who often came to visit the Roerichs.

While still quite young, Roerich showed a particular aptitude for drawing, and by the time he reached the age of sixteen he began to think about entering the Academy of Art and pursuing a career as an artist. His father did not consider painting to be a fit vocation for a responsible member of society, however, and insisted that his son follow his own steps in the study of law. A compromise was reached, and in the fall of 1893 Nicholas enrolled simultaneously in the Academy of Art and at St. Petersburg University.

After finishing his university thesis, Roerich planned to set off for a year in Europe to visit the museums, exhibitions, studios, and salons of Paris and Berlin. Just before leaving he met Helena, daughter of the architect Shaposhnikov and niece of the composer Mussorgsky. There seems to have been an immediate mutual attraction, and they were soon engaged to be married. On his return from Europe their marriage took place.

Prompted by the need to provide some income for his new household, Roerich applied for and won the position of Secretary of the School of the Society for the Encouragement of Art, later becoming its head, the first of many positions that Roerich would occupy as a teacher and spokesman for the arts. Roerich determined to overhaul the Society and rescue it from the academic mediocrity it had foundered in for many years. He instituted a system of training in art that seems revolutionary even by today's standards: to teach all the arts — painting, music, singing, dance, theater, and the so-called “industrial arts”, such as ceramics, painting on porcelain, pottery, and mechanical drawing — under one roof, and to give his faculty free rein to design their own curriculum.

In 1902, the Roerichs celebrated the birth of their first son, George, and in the summers of 1903 and 1904, they set off on an extended tour of forty cities throughout Russia. Roerich's purpose was to contrast the styles and historical context of Russian architecture. The voyage was one of discovery, for wherever they went he was able to locate the remnants of Russia's past — ancient monuments, churches, city walls, and castles.

In 1904 Roerich painted the first of his paintings on religious themes. These mostly dealt with Russian saints and legends, and included Message to Tiron, Fiery Furnace, and The Last Angel, subjects that he returned to with numerous variants in later years.

In the years immediately preceding World War I, Roerich sensed an impending cataclysm, and his paintings symbolically depicted the awful scale of the conflict he felt descending upon the world. These works marked the birth of Roerich the“prophet". In Battle in the Heavens Roerich used the violent contrast of light and darkness to suggest the terrible events that would soon overtake Russia and all Europe. By this time, in his depiction of both historical and natural themes, symbolism and the use of allegory had become essential ingredients in his work.

By 1917 the revolution was raging in Russia and returning there would have been dangerous. The family began making plans to visit India, whose magnetic appeal had been felt increasingly during these years. This became a possibility in 1918 when Roerich was invited by a Swedish entrepreneur to exhibit his paintings in Stockholm. From there the family proceeded to London, where Sir Thomas Beecham had invited Roerich to design a new production of Prince Igor for the Covent Garden Opera.

Meanwhile, an invitation to come to America was extended by the Chicago Art Institute. It was accepted, and the tour opened successfully at the Kingore Gallery in New York in 1920. In addition to exhibiting over 400 paintings there and in many cities throughout the United States, Roerich designed the scenery and costumes for productions of The Snow Maiden, and Tristan and Isolde for the Chicago Opera Company. During his travels in America, Roerich painted a series in New Mexico, and the Ocean Series in Monhegan, Maine, where the family spent a summer. He responded to the spirit of enterprise he found in America and frequently wrote about the positive influence its developing technology would have on the world. Seeds were planted and the lives of individuals influenced by Roerich's magnetism and sense of mission.

In 1921, in New York, he founded the Master Institute of United Arts, in which he planned to realize the educational concepts he had incorporated into the curriculum in St. Petersburg. The Master Institute flourished, but it did not survive beyond 1937. While the country was in the grips of the Great Depression and the Roerich family was on expedition in the Far East, funds ran out and events caused a complete collapse of the organization that Roerich and his supporters had labored to build.

In May, 1923, the Roerichs were at last on their way to India, where, in that ageless land, amid the snows of the Himalayan range, they sought to turn their thoughts to the Eternal. The Roerichs landed in Bombay in December, 1923, and began a tour of cultural centers and historic sites, meeting Indian scientists, scholars, artists, and writers along the way. By the end of December they were already in Sikkim on the southern slopes of the Himalayas, and it is clear by the speed with which they reached the mountains that the Himalayas were where their interest lay.

In The Path, the figure of Christ leads the way along a tortuous path through crags and peaks of the Himalayas, a metaphor for the hazardous obstacles confronting the spiritual journeyer. Eastern religious figures and concepts appear in the paintings, important among these being the images of the Lord Maitreya — the Buddhist Messiah, the Kalki-Avatar of the Puranas, Rigden Jyepo of Mongolia, or the White Burkhan of Altai — all of whom are described in legends that link them with the Ruler of Shambhala, who is “destined to appear on earth for the final destruction of the wicked, the renovation of creation and the restoration of purity.”

At counterpoint to these themes in Roerich's painting is the image of Woman and her destined role in the coming era, and we can assume that what Helena Roerich wrote to a friend in 1937 reflects Nicholas' own point of view: “...woman should realize that she herself contains all forces, and the moment she shakes off the age-old hypnosis of her seemingly lawful subjugation and mental inferiority and occupies herself with a manifold education, she will create in collaboration with man a new and better world... Cosmos affirms the greatness of woman's creative principle. Woman is a personification of nature, and it is nature that teaches man, not man nature. Therefore, may all women realize the grandeur of their origin, and may they strive for knowledge.”

Nicholas Roerich depicted the great female deities in such paintings as She Who Leads, Madonna Laboris, and The Mother of the World. This latter conception, equivalent to the Lakshmi and Kali of India, is one of Roerich's most inspiring images, rendered with majesty in deep tones of blue and violet.

At the end of their major expedition, in 1928, the family settled in the Kullu Valley at an elevation of 6,500 feet in the Himalayan foothills, with a magnificent view of the valley and the surrounding mountains. Here they established their home and the headquarters of the Urusvati Himalayan Research Institute, which was organized to study the results of their expedition, and of those explorations that were yet to come. The Institute's activities included botanical and ethnological-linguistic studies, and the exploration of archeological sites. Under the direction of their father the two Roerich sons, George and Svetoslav, established a collection of medicinal herbs, and made extensive studies in botany and ancient medical lore, as well as in Tibetan and Chinese pharmacopoeia.

In the following year, on a trip back to New York for the opening of the Roerich Museum's new premises, Roerich raised an issue that had been close to his heart for many years. Using the Red Cross as an example, he proposed a treaty for the protection of cultural treasures during times of both war and peace — a proposal he had unsuccessfully tried to promote in 1914. In consultation with lawyers versed in international law, he drafted a Pact, and suggested that a flag would be flown over all places under its protection. This flag he called the Banner of Peace. The design of the Banner shows three spheres surrounded by a circle, in magenta color on a white background. Of the many national and individual interpretations of this symbol, the most usual are perhaps those of Religion, Art and Science as aspects of Culture, which is the surrounding circle; or of past, present, and future achievements of humanity guarded within the circle of Eternity. The symbol can be seen in the seal of Tamerlane, in Tibetan, Caucasian, and Scandinavian jewelry, and on Byzantine and Roman artifacts. The image of the Strasbourg Madonna is adorned with it. It can be seen in many of Roerich's paintings,

It is in his Himalayan paintings that one most easily finds evidence of the loftiness of spirit and sense of mission that led Roerich to attempt the tasks he set for himself. In them can be seen the sense of drama, the urgency of a message to send or receive, a traveler to greet, a mission to perform, a path to travel. The towering mountains stand for the spiritual goals that humanity must set for itself.

The pursuit of refinement and beauty was sacred for Roerich. He believed that although earthly temples and artifacts may perish, the thought that brings them into existence does not die but is part of an eternal stream of consciousness — man's aspirations nourished by his directed will and by the energy of thought. Finally, he believed that peace on Earth was a prerequisite to planetary survival and the continuing process of spiritual evolution, and he exhorted his fellow man to help achieve that peace by uniting in the common language of Beauty and Knowledge.

Nicholas Roerich died in Kullu on December 13, 1947. His body was cremated and its ashes buried on a slope facing the mountains he loved and portrayed in many of his nearly seven thousand works.

Nicholas Roerich Museum in New York
Nicholas Roerich paintings