Eesti kunsti oksjonid

Tempera on paper. 1924.
Signature: A. Kaigorodoff. 24

Anatoli Kaigorodov (Kaigorodoff, 1878-1945) had not only graduated from the Stieglitz Art School and the Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg by the time he came to Estonia but had also achieved recognition as a landscape painter at international exhibitions, mainly in Germany.

His father, Dmitri Kaigorodov, was also known in Estonia as a phenologist and researcher of bird migration while his brother was an architect in St. Petersburg. While living in Estonia, Kaigorodov actively participated in exhibitions and had an art studio in the center of Tallinn.

“Sunset in a seaside village” was completed in 1924 and carries with it the artist’s impressions of a creative journey to the Northern coast. This was a time when his work was particularly marked by reminiscences of Art Nouveau and when he preferred gouache and tempera to oil painting. Kaigorodov’s greatest trump card was his masterful play with light and shadow, both in bright daytime and in subdued evening and night landscapes.

By contrasting the warmly glowing yellow of the sun with the cool blue, he masterfully conveys the transition from day to night on the painting surface – that fleeting moment when one is not yet over and the other has yet arrived, when the land and the sea are covered with a particularly magical glow. Even the sheep, already covered with a light veil of twilight, are about to go to sleep and are still enjoying the last warm caress of the sun. However, its most passionate glow spreads over the coastal pines defying the wind on the cliff.

Text: Mai Levin, Katre Palm