Eesti kunsti oksjonid

Oil on plywood. 1935.
Signature: A. JANSEN

Grandmaster August Jansen (1881-1957) is one of the most important cultivators of Estonian farm landscapes whose paintings on the subject have survived from his years of study at the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts (1904-1913). His “Evening farm” (1926, Tartu Art Museum) and “Muhu landscape” (aka “Muhu village”, 1928, Tartu University Art Museum) are magnificently generalizing and the biggest attraction at the exhibit dedicated to the 140th anniversary of August Jansen and Roman Nyman at the Allee Gallery was also “Tammi Farm with a river” (1945-47, private collection).

Jansen had already looked out for Tammi Farm for his family to use as a summer home in 1916 when he was staying in Vanaveski, a manor next to Klooga Manor. In 1931, he bought the farm and built a studio for himself in it. “Farm view with bales of rye” depicts the same Tammi farm on a sunny August day when the rye has been cut and chopped. The rural village was truly an idyllic place with a forest, a river and old farms.

Jansen painted these farms in the following decades. However, this painting is an exceptionally good example of Jansen’s clear and lush approach to form, abundance of light, bright and decorative coloring. The forest in the background creates a feeling of isolation from the rest of the world, while the smoke rising from the chimney adds to the feeling of home.

The work was exhibited at the exhibition dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the birth of August Jansen and Roman Nyman at the Art Museum of Estonia in Kadriorg Palace in October-November 1981 and is recorded in the catalogue “August Jansen” compiled by Tiina Abel (State Art Museum of the Estonian SSR 1983).

Text: Mai Levin