The Himalayas (Etude) (34) Roerich N.K. (Part 1)

Description of Nikolai Roerich’s painting "The Himalayas

Roerich is a singer of the mountains. Believing that they were where man should live, he immortalized them in his paintings with enviable stubbornness and skill, as if giving them new life on paper. Shambhala, the city of great truth, is hidden in the mountains. The thin air is useful for understanding oneself, the subtle mountain peaks and their beauties purify the soul, and living among real nature, not tamed by technology, strengthens the body.

"The Himalayas" is an idealized, song-like portrayal of the mountains, in which they appear mysterious, majestic, legendary. Not just a terrain located in a particular country, at particular latitudes and longitudes. They seem to have been transferred to the canvas directly from legends, in which heroes traverse rivers and mountains, in which bogatyrs grow waist-deep into the earth, in which devils eat people, and cunning is valued on a par with military prowess.

They are shown at sunset, bathed in a hot scarlet glow too bright for dawn. Their slopes glow with the red flame of the sun, while others, those that remain in shadow, are hidden by a thick blue twilight. To a man standing in the shadows, it would seem like night already.

A man standing in the sun would feel that it is still only early evening. A person standing above the other two and climbing to the top would see that the mountains seem unable to determine what time of day they reign. Their duality attracts the eye, creates a marvelous contrast between the glow of day and the twilight of night.

The sky above the mountains is fiery, orange, and they poke their peaks into it. There are no people in the picture, no smoke from the chimney of the hermit’s lodge or shepherd’s house, no human figure or any other trace of presence. The mountains are pristine, pure, empty and silent.

The people who come to them will have to become one with them, to reign in true silence, and perhaps they will be able to know the meaning of everything, which only the mountains know.