From 1850 to 1857 he attended the St. Petersburg Academy of Applied Arts. He worked hard; he painted portraits, landscapes and made the sketches to historical pictures of Ancient Rome life and of the Middle Ages. In 1863 painted the picture "Veiled Vespers" he became a professor. Nicholas Ghe became one of the organizers and heads of the Peredvizhniki Association created in 1870. In 1876 after a line of the unsuccessful pictures on the topic “Home history” he made a farm in Chernigov Region his home, there he was engaged in an agriculture and craft. On a boundary of 1870 and 1880 Ghe again turned to the art. In his works there were a lot pictures on the gospel topic. The Ghe's painting underwent the striking changes. He refused not only from the academician canons, but also from the aspiration to historical concreteness. A history of the Christ the artist perceived as one of the episodes of eternal goods and evil fighting.